The Traveling Fiascoes of Elmo Carol
by ELMO-kibafangirl11
Summary: Elmo didn't often get asked for directions, especially not by strange short girls in peculiar clothing. Follow the life of a 15-year-old Welsh girl as she travels through the One Piece world, her journey hindered by mistakes and tomfoolery. Be prepared.
1. Of Books and Trains

**Chapter 1: Of Books and Trains**

I don't remember much about the day I, err, 'passed'. I don't know exactly why - we sort of go about our lives with the idea that nothing bad's going to happen. We won't deny the fact that bad things _do_ happen - in fact, most people are ready for when they might go wrong - but most people don't worry constantly with every second, wondering if the next person they bump into is going to stab them in the gut or beat them senseless, or perhaps even take them to another world.

Apparently common sense doesn't work like that.

But, then, as my Dad so often liked to remind me, "Common sense isn't common; you learn it." There are a lot of things that my Dad liked to remind me of, although it's probably a better idea to mention them when they become relevant rather than try to list them all at once. That would be rather tiresome and pointless, I think.

Speaking of pointless, it's about time that I explained this situation to you, from the beginning, to the very best of my ability. Ready? Set?

Go.

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><p>For the most part of my life, from 5 to 15, I lived in Wales, UK. My hometown area wasn't the prettiest around, nor was it the most friendly and crime-free, but it was home and it had been for nearly all that I could remember.<p>

And the town of Swansea had enough shops to get by on. Sure, it could do with a Krispy Kremes, and according to my sister a Taco Bell, but I had always liked it despite my friends' complaints.

This all ran through my head as I stared blankly at the book I had been reading moments before. For some reason, whenever a book that has a situation similar to my own in it, I can't help but run it through my head the way I would have written it if I was writing my own story. Staring at the book like a zombie for several minutes without turning the page was an unfortunate after-effect.

"Are you actually _reading_ that?"

I spasmed - yes, I'm afraid that spasming is what I do when I 'jump' - at the question, almost dropping the book in my startlement. Catching a hold of it, thankfully, I turned to look down at the girl who had pulled me out of my daydreaming. She had long, dark-brown wavey-curley hair that reached past her shoulders with a peculiar reddish tinge, and was wearing a simple purple Lolita-style dress with lilac ribbon lacing on the left seam of the clothing. She also appeared to be wearing incredibly long leather boots that must have reached her thighs, disappearing beneath the end of the dress. She held an old, tattered book in her hands, the pages yellow and the typed words blotchy and faded. To my embarrassment, she caught me staring.

"What?" she snapped.

"N-nothing," I stuttered in a quiet voice, intimidated by this strangely-clothed girl. I hadn't ever seen a girl in this type of attire in real life - she reminded me of one of the girls in my friend's Lolita-fashion books. I waved the book I'd been 'reading' in her direction, assuming that from her original question that she wanted it. "Here."

She glared at the item as if she had just been insulted, and then glared at me. Her grey eyes meeting my greens gave me a jolt of uncertainty. A part of my mind ruffled its feathers at the look - what did I do to deserve such harsh treatment? - but I ignored it, my automatic politeness leaving me helpless.

"_I_ don't want it."

I couldn't help but feel stupid. "Oh, uh, okay…" my arm automatically turned to the shelf, searching for a gap that the book would fit in. Unnerved by the shorter female, who I glanced at again for a second before turning my gaze to my watch on my left wrist. She had numerous freckles scattered across her cheeks, which aided in her general cuteness and looks. I guessed that she was probably a part of the popular crowd in her school, wherever she went - though I guessed from her accent that she wasn't from around Wales, if even British.

The time read 2.45pm, and, deciding that I'd had enough for one Saturday, I figured that it was about time to catch the train home. Taking one last glance at the girl, who was frowning at her book with a fevered concentration, I started walking and left the book shop, merging into the crowds as one dressed in normal attire would. I couldn't help but think of how the girl I had been speaking to previously would have trouble blending in with her choice of clothes - but then, maybe she didn't want to blend in…

"Hey! Book-shop girl!"

I faltered in my steps, turning to see the dress-clad girl with her old battered book again. I was surprised that we weren't getting any looks from the other people passing us - was it only me who found her clothes strange? Well, not only that, but that she had followed me… I was disconcerted, to say the least. I didn't show that with my reply, however. "Uh, yeah?"

She tucked the book under her arm. "Could you direct me to the nearest… ah…" she scrunched up her mouth, as if unsure of how to pronounce her words. "…Train…station?"

I couldn't bring myself to say no and walk away. I mean, if I was in her position, asking somebody for directions, the worst thing would be if they said now. How could I do that to another person when I'm so scared of it happening to myself? The hitch with this situation was…

"…Yeah. I'm going there now, just follow me."

I would have to take her there personally.

* * *

><p>The girl had been all smiles and politeness after that. She had introduced herself with a charming simper, "I'm Symphony. It's… <em>nice<em> to meet you." holding her hand out for a hand shake. I had taken it unsurely, and with an attempted friendly twitch of the lips myself I replied "Call me Elmo."

There hadn't been much dialogue. Although the brunette's demeanour had become more friendly, I could still feel some sort of chill behind her words, and with every question I tried to start a conversation with I was answered with short and uninformative replies. Even longer questions, which invited her to reply without giving me a large amount of information went something like this:

"I don't recognise your accent, Symphony - do you come from Wales?"

"No."

"…Do you live in the UK?"

"No."

"…So where _do_ you come from?" "Tellus."

"Where's that?"

"Several miles North of Algreen."

"…Where's Algreen?"

And then a dry look. Something about this girl just kept making me feel more and more stupid. I couldn't put my finger on it…

By the time we reached the train station, I was feeling like a Neanderthal and Symphony was back into that book of hers, practically nose to the page. I shifted my glasses up my nose slightly and wondered if she was short sighted. I tried to imagine her wearing glasses, but it just didn't seem right to me.

"We're here, by the way." No response. "Symphony?"

She looked up from the book momentarily, glancing around the room, and then to me. "Where's the train?"

I gave her a peculiar look. "Uh, they're trains. Plural. There are four, I don't know where three of them go at around this time…" I trailed off, her facial expression telling me that she really didn't care what I was talking about. I swallowed. "They're through the terminal gates over there," my hand waved in their direction, "Although you'll need a ticket to get through…"

Her expression didn't change. "Well, carry on. Lead the way."

I wasn't sure whether she meant to go through the terminal gates or to lead her to the ticket office, but as I stared at her blankly I decided that I didn't want to ask her myself. All she was doing was lowering my self esteem, which I didn't need at all. I figured that she could stop me if I wasn't doing what she wanted me to do, and that if she didn't and I got through the gates and left her behind that I'd probably be better off. I did what she asked of me, didn't I? I'd brought her to the train station. There. Done. Dusted.

And so I walked to the gates, fishing my orange and white-green ticket from my pocket and pressing it into the ticket slot. The slot pulled my ticket through its system and pushed it back out, the gate opening for me as I retrieved the slip of paper and marched through, only turning around to see what Symphony was doing once I was in front of the timetable posters.

To my surprise she was directly behind me, still following as if nothing had happened. I wondered if she'd already had a train ticket and had just gotten through the gate quickly, or if she had directly followed me and had somehow gotten through before the gate closed. My curiosity getting the better of me, I asked, "Symphony, how-"

She cut me off abruptly. "Don't talk to me!"

I was startled into submission, her snapping upsetting me somewhat. I don't think I had ever met someone who treated another person who had been kind to them in such a way. I was disgruntled and annoyed, and decided to from then on ignore the girl, despite the fact that she continued to follow me to my train and got on behind me, still nose-deep in her book, her eyes only glancing down momentarily to watch where she was going.

Finding the nearest empty seats in the carriage, I sat myself down roughly on the inside part of the chair, effectively taking up both of the seats, sending an obvious 'I don't want you to sit with me' message to my follower.

The motion was ignored, of course. Symphony didn't bother sitting down, nor did she make a move as if to try and take a seat. She just halted once I'd stopped moving and continued to read her book thoroughly, eyebrows furrowed, expression stern and concentrating. I frowned at her - being the sore loser that I was, I was annoyed that she hadn't paid attention to my act of defiance. It's not like I made them very often, she could at least have _noticed_ my hard work.

Turning my attention elsewhere, I stared out of the window. There wasn't anything in particular to look at other than grey concrete. There were some paintings attached to the wall further down the rails, but the carriage was too far back for me to be able to see them without gluing my face to the window.

Once the minutes on the flip-clocks hanging on the ceiling hit 15:09, the train shifted, pushing itself to chug forwards at a pain-staking pace. It sped up slowly, following the rails - a path I knew well. I had been using the train to get to town ever since I found out that it was cheaper and _much_ quicker than the bus. I was fond of trains, despite the stories that my Tadcu* told, with his back-breaking work with steam engines that he did for a living when he was young and my Dad was a boy.

The train was passing over the bridge over the River Tawe when I turned back to glance at Symphony. It was only meant to last a second, but when I saw her she was rigid, her mouth moving as if murmuring something, her body looking unnatural and sharp. I didn't know what was happening, but there was obviously something wrong. I turned in my seat and pushed myself to stand, still staring at her worriedly. "Symphony? Symphony!" she didn't respond to my words, so I stepped forwards, asking "Are you okay? Symphony?"

The train jolted and I stumbled, catching myself on the wall. However, like a statue, the train's jarring had caused Symphony to begin to fall backwards. I reached a hand out to grab her, to save her from hurting herself, but as soon as my fingertips came into contact with her skin she became animated again, shoving me off of her and screaming, "_Don't touch me!"_

All of the lights went out - phones, lights, even the daylight was blotted out. I could see silhouettes of people carrying on as if nothing was happening. And still, Symphony was falling, and now I was too, and everything was dark and the grumbling of the people and the train were blurring into each other, a deep hum echoing in my ears as I hit the floor.

But then the floor wasn't there anymore and it was just darkness, and I was still falling, and the hum became deeper and deeper, swallowing my senses.

Through the hum I can recall hearing a faint screaming, probably Symphony cursing at me.

Then the hum turned into the sound of waves, and the screaming turned into seagulls calling…

* * *

><p><strong>* Tadcu is the Welsh word for Grandad, Ladies and Gentlemen. ~The more you know~<strong>

Hello and welcome back to the world of Elmo to those who know/previously knew of me, and welcome to those who have no idea who I am. I haven't written a story for fanfiction for years, and, well, this is my return. I'm hoping that it'll redeem me somewhat for the past unfinished stories that have been deleted. I'm going to continue to write this for as long as there's no reason not to, although I'm not promising tightly-scheduled updates. I'll update when the chapter's finished, as ya do, and try and do better for you than I've done before.

**I'm also hopeful that the future chapters will be better and more humorous that this one, but, uh, I can't accurately predict that.**

**Reviews would be greatly appreciated, as well as helpful tips and maybe a bit of criticism. Flamers will be spoken to politely.**

**Trolls will have pudding thrown at them.**


	2. Of Lighthouses and a Stowaway

**Uh, yeah, sorry for the length of this. (5199 words ;^; I didn't mean to ramble on for so long, goddamnit. *Sigh* oh well.)**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2:<strong> **Of Lighthouses and a Stowaway**

I don't recall when I stopped falling, nor when I closed my eyes, but when the distorted feeling retreated enough for me to realize that I was lying on a flat terrain with a rock stabbing my gut and that my chest felt like it was collapsing into itself (a feeling that I recognised to go hand-in-hand with the process of lying on a hard surface for hours), I groaned and my eyes fluttered open.

I wasn't sure if I had been sleeping or not, but I treated the situation as if that was the case. I lay still and for a few moments, my eyes met with a pale blue horizon. I took a deep breath in through my nose, the familiar smell of salt in the air. It was at that moment I realized that what I was looking at was the sky, and the grey-blue below it was the sea.

And then the pain received from taking such a deep breath kicked in, and I pushed myself up from the ground with a groan. My ribs felt like they'd been crushed. I didn't know from experience, but I felt like I might now possibly know how a woman felt after escaping the bindings of her corset in the 1900s or something. Possibly. But, then, I was probably exaggerating…

Pushing myself back to sit cross-legged, I stared at the scenery. Where was I? This wasn't Wales… Directly in front of me, I could see for miles; the ocean going so far off into the distance that somewhere along the way it blended into the sky, which then blended into some kind of strange cloud cover. I knew that this wasn't Wales because the sea was _blue_. The sea around Wales is a dark turquoise-grey… To my right, I could see an earthy cliff, also stretching for miles. Closer - much, _much_ closer - to myself, there was a sheer drop which gave way to some sort of raging river…

I scrambled away from the edge of the cliff, my thought process slow and my reaction speed slower still. Cliff edges were not good. Not good at all. Cliffs meant heights and heights meant falling and falling-

Falling was not good, nosiree.

As I pulled back from the overhang, my heart hammering, my hearing kicked back in full-force with a roar so loud and frightening it made me shudder.

Fear of the rock face had made me move, but the fear of this new sound made me freeze. My eyes searched uneasily for the origin, and found it along with the sight of a gigantic mountain, the bottom of it starting not too far away from where I sat. I wondered how I hadn't noticed it before. Rushing down from it was the river that I had scrambled away from seconds ago - the water was quite literally frothing at the mouth.

Quickly getting over the fact that my life may have been threatened by a cliff, I moved my attention away from the humungous rage-river-mountain (as it would now be nicknamed) to what was now behind me. The view was practically a mirrored version of the earthy cliff on the opposite side of the river, except for the addition of a lighthouse that was looming over my head like some kind of long-necked ground-monster.

Deciding that twisting my neck around everywhere was becoming too much hassle, I stood up, spinning on one heel to face the building, my head craned back as I attempted to see the top of the lighthouse.

Which was, I thought, a decisively a bad idea once the blood rushed to my head. I staggered slightly, my head making a rather grumpy throb, and figured that seeing as looking up always made me lose my balance anyway it was probably about the right time to look at the views that were around my head level. Start low and build up. No use in being ambitious, obviously.

My curiosity piqued and my balance re-caught, I began to wander around the lighthouse wall, searching for an entrance. It was typical that I somehow managed to walk around the whole building to find the entrance only to find out that it had only been a few steps away in the opposite direction that I had travelled.

Once I'd finished glaring at the door for my own misfortune, I reached forwards and pushed the handle down, slowly stepping into the darkened building, careful with every step.

I don't think that my common sense had quite kicked in by this point, because a sensible person might have thought about knocking on the door first before just waltzing in. Perhaps if I had been in my correct state of mind I would never have gone _near_ the building, for fear of axe murderers or tall faceless gentlemen.

However, my usual paranoia had, for some reason, decided to leave me alone for a few moments as I entered the building, eyes wide open in the awing size of the inside. There was something breathtaking about being in a tall, empty building that had an old, ruffian look to it. But what _really_ made the lighthouse special was its lack of hundreds of ceilings or floors. This was just a gigantic tube with a spiral staircase lining the walls and a room up the top. I had never seen anything like it. It was one huge spiral, almost hypnotizing.

Craning my neck so far back soon began to make me feel nauseous, and so I was brought back to my own height of 5'10. I spun about the room on my heel, inspecting for any sign of life, or just generally anything at all. The building looked like it hadn't been lived in for years. I wondered if the searchlight in the top of the building even _worked_.

My spinning came to a stop when the open door of the lighthouse came back into view. I stared at it for a moment, the cogs of my mind grinding against each other at a painstakingly slow pace. I smirked to myself. I was probably trying to connect some kind of symbolism to the thing, as I usually did - I loved to try and make my life a storybook, giving each person I knew a characterisation…

To my surprise, a sudden gust of wind blew into the room, blowing my baggy shirt out behind me and my hair from my face - and slamming the door shut.

I gaped at it, making some sort of gagging noise, my mind running wild - all of a sudden my thoughts were screaming at me, '_YOU'RE NOT __**SAFE**__ HERE, YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, YOU'RE AWAY FROM HOME AND __**YOU'RE NOT SAFE HERE**__, GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT'_

And as my knees ceased to function and I fell to the floor, my throat dry and clenching, my hands beginning to shake and my thoughts running wildly around my head, screaming of paranoias and doom; another set of thoughts started up, quietly and calmly. '_The door closing means you can't go back. It means you're stuck. __**That's**__ the symbolism. You're not going to see your Mother again. You're not going to see your Dad again. You're not going to see your sister again. You're not going to see your cat. You're not going to see your rabbit. You're not going to see your friends.'_

And the list kept going, and going, and going. Two people talking in my head, one screaming, one stating. I could hardly breathe through the lump in my throat. I could usually cry at anything, but I think that by this point I was in too much shock to do anything but the basic instincts to _keep on breathing, keep on at it, there we go, it'll be alright, just keep breathing, keep breathing, you need it for the oxygen in your blood, and you need that to keep your body going, because if you can keep your body going then you can __**do something**__ about this, __**anything, **__just keep breathing._

For a few, long moments, I sat there, unable to do anything else but let the front of my mind go numb and the back of my mind keep a-wandering. And then the wind outside wailed, whistling through a gap in the door, and the room was filled with wind again as the door was forced open the opposite way that it had been closed. The sky had turned a deep purple-grey, and everywhere had an orange tinge. For once I knew it wasn't from the street lights.

Rain started crashing down in torrents with a _CR-ACK!_ of thunder, soaking the ground a deep brown. The front of my mind picked itself back up, silencing the other thoughts that had been marching around before it. I managed to smile fondly at the sight outside. Having lived in Wales for the last ten years of my life, rain was something I was used to. It was also something I was rather fond of, for as long as I stayed dry.

It was something full of familiarity to me, and the frantic pattering of the storm calmed me.

With a flash of lightening and another crash of thunder soon after, I felt a painful panging in my chest. My twin was terrified of storms. As much as I loved one, I could never fully enjoy a good thunder and lightening show because my sister was always in the room next door, petrified.

Before I could lapse into another depressing 'I'm-never-going-to-see-my-family-again' fiasco, I put some more symbolism into the open doorway. A doorway closed meant you couldn't go back the way you'd came. A new doorway opened, or a doorway opened another way, meant that you could go back another way. Surely. Was that the case? Or did it mean that I had to go on another way…?

If it meant that I had to start a new path or some other shit like that then there was going to be serious hell to pay for which ever God came to meet me at my death bed.

Siriusly.

* * *

><p>Things over the next few days blended into a sort of blur. I stayed in the lighthouse for the rest of the night, after firmly closing the door to stop the rain and wind from getting in. I woke up melting, the inside of the lighthouse sweltering with heat, and once I'd stumbled outside to find that it was actually cooler out in the sun than it was inside with the shade I started to formulate the idea that the weather here was very temperamental.<p>

Now, I still wasn't very sure what was going on. I wasn't sure whether someone had kidnapped me and brought me here and was going to come back, or if I was in something like a coma (although that idea was scratched out pretty quickly, as according to most TV programs comatose patients don't realize that they were in a coma until they wake up from one. TV programs aren't the most reliable information-sources, but whatever). Heck, for all I knew I was in some sort of flu-induced dream. I didn't know, I'd never had the flu.

However, also like most TV programs, I wanted out of my little confinement. The lighthouse was my shelter, but there was no food in there. After a thorough search I managed to find a tin bucket that had a strange orange tinge to it in the searchlight room (the light surprisingly working), but that was it. I had been right when I guessed that nobody had been living there for years.

While I waited for the weather to cool enough for me not to feel like curling up and dying after doing much more than walk around slowly, I wandered around where I had woken up the day previously, looking for clues. I was slightly annoyed with myself - the rain would've obviously washed away anything useful overnight. I did, however, find what may have been footprints before the rain had distorted them, leading from where I guessed I had been lying to the edge of the cliff. My own footprints followed my feet, and another set of marks - which I guessed were my own footprints from yesterday - led to and around the lighthouse. I wonder…

Once the temperature had lowered to my liking, I tried my hand at climbing the cliff behind the lighthouse. It looked tall enough from where I'd first seen it, having had to have craned my neck back while sitting down, but up close it looked impossible.

And impossible enough it had been. I'd only been able to climb a few feet before I slipped and fell all the way back to the bottom, jarring my ankle with my landing. Cradling my foot on the floor, I glared at the cliff as high up as I could, wondering how the _heck_ I would be able to reach the top. It really was impossible for my physical health - I had the weakest upper-arm strength of anyone that I knew. I didn't have the stamina nor the muscles to scale the rock face. What made it worse was that if I started climbing and got tired halfway up, I'd have to climb back down to rest. If I couldn't climb back down then I'd have to fall, and as I'd just found out, that wasn't the most graceful way to get down.

I'd then limped-slash-crawled back to the lighthouse and propped myself up against a wall inside, leaving the door open to try and let some more of the heat that was still stuck inside the building out. I fell asleep on and off while devising a plan for my escape - I would continue to attempt climbing the cliff face as high as I could go before I started feeling tired, and then climb back down. I would continue this until I reached the halfway point of the cliff (thereabouts), and then after a good rest I'd try climbing the whole way.

At some point I woke to the sound of pouring rain. Suddenly wide awake and probably over-rested, I remembered the tin bucket and dashed up a few of the steps of the spiral staircase to grab it and then take it outside, already hearing the racket that the rain thrumming onto the metal made.

My food stores were completely empty, and _man_ was I hungry, but at least now my water stores were going to be sorted. Despite my wide-awake status, I somehow fell asleep again to the sound of rain hitting tin.

When I next woke it was scorching again, and I was dismayed to find that most of the water that the bucket had collected had evaporated. I gulped down what was left and put the bucket back inside the building, the taste of metal stuck in my mouth.

Favouring my bad ankle, I started climbing the cliff again. Using it so soon after an accident _probably_ wasn't the smartest of ideas, but I had always been a 'distract-pain-with-more-pain' kind of gal.

Three climbs up-and-down and one climb up-and-fall-on-ass with my arms and legs aching like they'd never ached before later, my foot was screaming at me and I decided that it was probably a good idea to stop. I rested myself against the rocky wall and fell asleep again, only waking when rain started picking down. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to get up and run and reach the lighthouse in time to not get soaked, I took the path of just glaring at the sky, thinking 'You dare. You _dare_.'

It dared.

Eventually, once I was completely soaked to my skin and I couldn't see a thing through my glasses, I picked myself up and hobbled back to the lighthouse, spending my time before slipping back into slumber massaging my foot.

I think the main problem of this whole situation was, because of my lack of sustenance, while my arms were getting stronger, my body was getting weaker. A vicious cycle.

By my third day, all I could do was massage my ankle some more and watch as the rain happily thrummed against my bucket. And wait for my now-damp clothes to dry. I didn't do much thinking. All I knew was that I was bloody starving, felt horrible unclean, not to mention that I was constantly tired, constantly thirsty, and I was constantly annoyed. This was the calmest I had felt for a while. I just needed to stop and breathe for a bit. Things would work out. Probably. I just needed to keep calm and carry on. As ya do.

By the fourth day I was up again, the ache in my ankle almost gone (or so I liked to tell myself). My determination driven only by the annoyance of an empty stomach and lack of ability in myself, by the end of the day I had managed to climb all the way to the half-way mark and back down to the ground, only slipping and landing on my good foot two or three feet from the earth. I don't know how, but somehow I didn't manage to injure my good leg with the landing, and my bad ankle hadn't worsened much from that morning.

My attitude considerably better, I decided that one last night of sleep should be enough resting time for a full-scale-cliff attempt. I waltzed back to the lighthouse in good spirits.

Upon entering the building I was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia. Tonight was probably (and I had no doubt that it would be) the last time that I would take shelter in this tall, sturdy building. Tomorrow, I would be up and over that mountain, off to… god-knows where. Heck. Where was I going? Brushing the panicked feeling off my shoulders with a simple we'll-cross-that-bridge-when-we-get-there, I decided that for my final night I should take the full advantage of staying in a lighthouse and sleep in the top room.

A long climb up hundreds of stairs later, I could say that what I really liked about the top room of the lighthouse was that it was basically a room made of glass. I didn't have a clue how the massive bulb that worked as the guiding light kept working - there were no visible wires anywhere, nor any switches - but the stand it sat on provided for an excellent place to lean on while I sat myself down and made myself comfortable. The bulb itself only gave out a strong glow at the most, not strong enough to blind me (more than I already was, pfft), but once the beam hit the glass it seemed to strengthen.

I loved the view from the windows. The sun was setting by now, and the sky was a wondrous shade of orange. The brown dirt that lay like a pool of porridge below me was shadowed due to the setting sun, giving the ground an interesting look. The light glinted on the sea, dancing on the waves.

I fell asleep trying to think of some sort of poetic paragraph to describe the sight.

* * *

><p>I woke up sometime during the next day with a feeling of panic, remembering some sort of dream where everything was shaking and there was a loud wailing, something like "BWOOOO", over and over again.<p>

However, that feeling wasn't the source of my panic.

I could hear the sound of something like a rowdy crowd, and was hit by another wave of nostalgia as my usual maths classes filled with the hooligan boys in my year group came to mind. As I crawled to the window and peered down at the ground, I spotted a large group of people in dark clothing, lugging large wooden crates about and using them as seats.

From so high up, there wasn't much more than that I could see. Remembering that there was a small window (more like some kind of large peephole) a few flights of stairs down, I picked myself up and dashed down the steps, one hand on the wall to try and make sure I didn't fall to my sudden and untimely death. Getting to the window, I practically pressed my forehead to the musty glass, getting as close to the thing so as to get a good view without breaking my nose or my glasses.

From there I noticed that there was a pile being created in the middle of the sitting-crates, made mostly of what looked like broken crates and chairs, and even a few planks of wood here and there that looked like something had ripped them apart. My question of how they had arrived in my little area was answered as soon as I spotted a large, battered-looking wooden ship.

This perhaps startled me the most. A wooden cargo ship? Those weren't made anymore, as far as I knew. Most ships nowadays relied on machines and motor engines rather than winds and sails. It was like I'd travelled to the past or something…

I heard the door below me hit the wall with a _thwack_ and I dropped to the ground - or, well, steps - automatically. I always had been a skitterish person when it came to loud noises, and there was something about this situation that gave me a bad feeling. I couldn't place my finger on it… which was typical, really, I mean, _seriously_-

"I'm storin' some of the crates in the tower, Gorn! Keep 'em outta the sun fer a while!" a rugged-sounding voice echoed up the building, making my pattering heart leap and begin to gallop. I was terrified. Bloody hell. (And, yet, despite this, some small part of my brain decided to pipe up "You're just like a spy~!")

A quieter voice that I assumed was coming from either the ship or the crate-circle yelled back something about needing to keep the food dry and cool while they fixed the ship, and then the man below me closed the door rather loudly behind him on his way out.

For a few seconds I sat back on my set of steps, leaning against the wall, breathing and sighing deeply in order to try and calm my heartbeat. The same part of my mind that had piped up earlier cropped up again with "Not even coffee makes your heart freak out so much, sheesh." I ignored it as I decided that it would probably be a good idea to crawl back up to the top room. The… well, whatever they were. The… _people_ that had taken residence of the ground below me weren't interested in the lighthouse itself, so with any luck they wouldn't come up and investigate the higher parts of the building.

I didn't know what it was, but I took it as instinct - there was something really dangerous about these people.

* * *

><p>Curled up with my arms wrapped around my legs and my expression in a scowl, I watched the people wandering around what I assumed they thought were their dwellings - in a <em>day<em> they had defaced the place. There were random planks of wood, splinters, cans, fruit peels and many other things littered across the floor from what I could see. My already low impression of them from what I was still calling my instincts had been confirmed and then lowered still during the time that I had watched them - scattered like ants. It reminded me of the times when all of the flying ants gather outside their nests, ready for 'the right time' to fly off and go mate with a queen ant or something.

Which then brought me to the idea of how much the men down there were probably slagging off women that they'd slept with, or some doll they'd seen in a pub somewhere. The thought brought a grimace to my face.

As far as both my sight and hearing had told me, none of the men had re-entered the building. Of course, relying on my sight was a terrible idea as I had awful night vision, even with my glasses. It was probably part of the reason why I was scared of the dark, but whatever.

I could've just waited in my little safe-room until the men left the next morning, but, hell no, my curiosity wouldn't allow that, what are you talking about. Going away from my safe-room and going outside was a great idea.

Knowing that the only light the people below me had was the firelight (the pile of wood in the middle of the sitting-crates had been a bonfire in the making), I felt a bit more confident about going out and snooping around. I wanted to know who these people were, damnit, and if all else failed I could just lie on the floor and pretend to be a log.

And trust me, I know how easy it is to mistake a person lying down at night for a log. I've played enough night-time games with my scout troop.

It's incredibly easy.

So easy that you can trip over them and mistake their quiet and muffled "ouch" as something else.

Easily.

My stealth radar on and my heart thrumming like a musician on their guitar, I quietly opened the door of the lighthouse and slid outside into the cool midnight air, softly closing the door behind me. I was in pitch darkness - I couldn't see a thing around me. All I could see was that in one direction there was a group of people illuminated by firelight, as well as a whole load of crates, the ground, and a little ways off what I guessed was their ship. It certainly looked like a ship.

Although it was a bit misshapen from a whole load of repairs, like a few planks of wood just stuck on. For the first time I caught myself wondering how the ship had sustained such injuries. It… it couldn't have come down from the mountain, could it? That would be insane… I didn't know why anyone would even want to _try_ and survive that monstrous river. Not to mention how anyone would even be able to get a ship _up_ the mountain in the first place.

Pushing the puzzling thoughts away, I slowly made my way towards the nearest crate, which, while not actually that far away from the fire, wasn't being sat on. I felt that it was the safest place to crouch behind and eavesdrop without being discovered.

Settling myself down comfortably behind the object, my ears instantly picked up the closest conversation to myself.

"…this girl's been requesting a wanted poster be made, Y'see. Says this person's dangerous, t'the marines mostly, but she also says the girl's a danger to civilians, too."

"'s that so, eh? What's this dangerous girl look like, then?"

"Dunno. The girl reportin' didn' have a photo. Wells, I say to her, y'can't have a wanted poster made if y'don't have a picture! She jus' gave me a look, like I was stupid, and then said somethin' about getting' a picture later. She didn' seem too happy, mind you."

It would have been easy enough to zone out of that conversation and zone into another, but something made me keep listening.

"Eh? Well, well. You seen this girl before?"

"Nah, never seen 'er around before. Said she'd just come from the Grand Line, needed a few things that were only sold in Logue Town, but was going along back that way later. I don' have a clue how she got back through reverse mountain, mind you…"

I furrowed my eyebrows and bit my lip. Logue Town… Reverse mountain… Why did those sound so similar? It was on the tip of my tongue. Mountain, mountain… They couldn't be talking about the mountain that sat behind the lighthouse, could they? Reverse mountain… And what was it that they had said earlier? A danger to the… marines…

…oh _shit._

Marines.

Reverse mountain.

Logue Town.

_Fucking Logue Town._

They were all place-names from One Piece.

And to think that I'd had the feeling that I wasn't anywhere near home anymore…

…But, no, wait. That's just… stupid. I couldn't just _assume_ such a thing- that's- that's a stupid assumption to make - there could be a Logue Town in the world somewhere, surely, and, heck, reverse mountain could just be a nickname… Although I didn't know how such a nickname could come about.

Through my wandering thoughts, the conversation went on.

"What'd the girl look like?"

"Short. Didn' look too old, prob'ly in her teens. Brown curly hair, short dress, long boots. She was small and cute, I'd guess my sister'd say, but she didn' seem like a good person t'mess with. 'Er name was somethin' like Serenity, or Symphony, or somethin' fancy like that."

Still consciously listening to the conversation, I was jolted out of my thoughts by the names. Symphony? Symphony was around here somewhere? I hadn't really thought about her for the past few days.

But, then, to be honest, I hadn't been thinking about much other than getting out of my 'confinement' and how hungry I was.

"An' she didn' say nothin' 'bout the girl she wants on a wanted poster, eh?"

"Well, yeah, she tried t'describe 'er for a bit but got impatient real fast. Tall, blonde, green eyes, that kinda malarkey. I can't do anything with that little information, I says to her, that's next t'useless."

My stomach dropped.

Well.

Shit.

Okay.

I was screwed.

Symphony certainly seemed to know the word vengeance well - although I wasn't completely sure what it was that I'd done wrong that was against her…

And, hey, little (er, tall) old me? Dangerous? I mean, I liked to think that I could pack a punch if I ever needed to, but I never _had_ needed to. I wasn't _dangerous_.

But, heck.

If this really _was_ the One Piece world (which was something I was still hesitant to believe), then a wanted poster was some real serious business. I wouldn't be able to just hop up onto the red line and wander around…

Well, surely, when one finds out that they're in one of their favourite stories, they search for the main characters? It was often that I caught myself thinking of my own reactions in situations with the Strawhats…

Why couldn't this be my chance to actually act them out?

…But I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to get out of this area. Surely if I kept travelling along the Grand Line I'd meet the Strawhats along the way?

…_Shit_. I was on the Grand Line. No wonder the weather was so trippy.

I mentally shook myself. Get back to the program, Elmo! You've got work to do! Stowawaying to… get down to. Right. I was going to be a stowaway on a scary, not-very-safe-looking ship with a crew of what I assumed were bounty hunters or cargo men. Better get to work, then.

* * *

><p><strong>Well, uh, again, let me apologize for the length. My original aim for chapter lengths was from around 2,500 words to 4,000, but, ah, I couldn't stop writing and then when I proof-read it this morning I could only cut down one paragraph. I feel like the rest of it's kinda needed. And as much as I wanted to stop halfway through this at one point, I originally wanted to get from the point of waking up in a strange place to at least stowawaying on a ship, and felt that if I didn't get that far then I was just kinda stalling. I want to actually get somewhere with each chapter, y'know XD<strong>

**So, uh, a fifteen-year-old me has kind of gotten onto a ship. I was going to go more into the whole stowawaying thing, but as I've said before it was getting ridiculously long. I'll move it into the next chapter.**

**Also, I'm going away tomorrow to Cotswald (try saying _that_ without a posh accent) until Friday, wherever that is, and there's a good chance that I won't be able to get at a computer _or_ the internet, so there's an even better chance that I won't be able to update directly on tuesday next week. I am going to take a notebook, however, so I _may_ be able to do some traditionally written writing, so to speak, and then type it up onto the computer when I get home. Heh. Who knows. We'll see. Either way, by the next chapter I should have some concept art up for you to look at.**

**And because this Author's note is getting ridiculously long, I shall bring it to a close. I'm not putting disclaimers up yet because so far none of the characters need disclaiming. Also, same as last chapter, most people's comments are welcomed (of any kind), but trolls=pudding+face.**


	3. Of Cargo Ships and Rotten Fruit

**A/N: The number 4000 doesn't exist, okay? Okay. Shhhh.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3:<strong> **Of Cargo ships and Rotten Fruit**

It was only once I'd settled myself amongst a labyrinth of crates and the ship had set sail again the next morning (this made obvious by the blustering wind and rain that had decided to wage war against this insecure, battered vessel - the ship was thrashing around like a toddler having a tantrum in a bath) that I realized the mistakes that I'd made in the process of becoming the stowaway that I now was.

For one thing, this wasn't doing anything for my confidence or paranoia problems. Sure, every time one of the crew entered the back room that I was hiding in and didn't come searching because of a creak or something that may possibly be a 15-year-old girl breathing behind a crate was a bit of a confidence boost.

But the price to pay for that little boost of confidence was a new surge of fear every time footsteps drew near, every time that door creaked open, and for every time that my breathing was even just a _smidge_ too loud I ended up with a suspicious ruffian creeping around corners and myself crawling around crates like a… well, like a stowaway on a ship.

Luckily for me, the crew seemed to think that I was a mouse infestation rather than a human being, so technically as long as I kept my weak and whimpering stomach quiet and I was careful myself, I was in the clear.

Hopefully.

The weather was iffy all day, as I predicted it would be (my resolve to not let myself completely believe that this _was_ the One piece world was crumbling by the second). I think that it was snowing at one point - or sleeting, who knew - which left me freezing to the point where all I wanted to do was curl up and cry in a corner.

…But, back to my idiotic mistakes. When my stomach next let a grumble of complaint escape, rummaging around in the crates for food started to look like a really good idea. The only reason I didn't follow through with it was because I didn't want to mess up while a crew member just waltzed in and caught me in the act. There was also the chance that I wouldn't be able to put everything back in the exact same order, and would therefore give myself away as a stowaway rather than an occult of incredibly strong and smart mice. (This is what I'd like to say I thought of straight away - however, I only thought about this _after_ I couldn't find anything to pry the crates open with.)

It was only then that I realized that the crate that had been stored in the lighthouse previously had probably been food. I proceeded to quietly knock my forehead against my hide-behind crate. Stupid, stupid, _stupid._ I was starving myself to death here, and I hadn't even taken the chance that had been given to me to _take_ the damn food and do what most humans like to do.

Y'know.

_**Survive**__._

My next head-crate let out a dangerously loud _thunk _and I decided to stop in danger of getting myself killed (which at this rate was going to be done by yours truly in a matter of moments anyway).

However, this trail of thoughts soon reminded me of the peculiar dream that I'd had during the night before my departure, leading me to the next point I'd like to make. Something in my head clicked as I realized that those loud _"BWOOOOOO"'s _and earthquake-like tremors hadn't been a dream.

Fuck.

Laboon.

_Fuuuckkkkkk._

If Laboon was still hitting his head against the red line, then that meant Luffy and the rest of the crew hadn't entered the Grand Line yet. Which meant that they still had to enter it at some point.

Which meant that I had now missed them.

God _damnit_.

As I continued to hit my head against the crate as punishment, I reasoned to myself that for all I knew it wasn't anytime _near_ the Strawhat's era yet. For all I knew, it could have taken them days, weeks, heck, even _years_ to get there. I had read fanfics where the character thrown into the One Piece world had been thrown in there a few years too early. What was I going to do if their time really _was_ years from now? Ohdear, ohdear…

…Hah. That was what this was, wasn't it? A bad fanfic idea that somebody was writing. Pissing hell. I was a pawn in somebody's idea of a comedy fic.

…As much of a ridiculous idea that was, I clung to it. It gave me something else to focus on other than my gnawing hunger. At least if I kept thinking that there was somebody out there who I could blame all this on, then I would stick to that for the moment. It also added another person to my list of people-to-give-hell-to-when-I-die.

Eventually I stopped my head-banging. It had started to become an irritating beat, repetitive and unyielding. The idea that the sound of myself hitting my head against a crate was getting stuck in my head made me feel nauseous.

I turned to fiddling with my watch. The strap was home-made and messy - a poor attempt at making something interesting - and only had 2 holes for the buckle. Sadly, due to my diet (or lack of thereof), my wrists had become thin-ish and bony, making the watch strap loose enough to be able to twist around my arm and let the watch slide onto the inside of my arm rather than the outside, something that irritated me greatly. This only ever happened when the hole that I usually used to buckle the watch with stretched due to over-use.

I supposed that that may be what was happening here, but I didn't want to kid myself. My throat was painful and dry and I had no water to try and quench it with, my stomach felt like it was tying itself in knots, and my head was constantly throbbing.

It was a wonder that I could even think clearly.

* * *

><p>Even with my poor time-keeping skills, with the help of my watch I came to the conclusion that the ship's travels only took around a day and a half. I had been playing a game in my head - or, rather, some kind of descriptivepoetic exercise that my Dad had once told me about - where I mentally described what I could see around me. Once I had run out of things to think of about the room without repeating myself, I moved on to what I could hear - a lot of my descriptions were about the 'thudding footsteps of doom' that overshadowed me (literally), but every time that I noticed a change in the weather (such as a pick up in the wind, a whistling sound and the feel of chopping waves a dead giveaway, or a sudden chill being the telltale sign of snow and/or frost) I went into great lengths to try and figure out what the weather may be via descriptive paragraphs in my head.

Despite this, it took me a while to realize that the weather had stabilized. At this revelation my heart gave a burst of adrenaline. How the hell was I going to get off this ship without being caught? The crates in the room I was hiding in would surely be taken away one by one - my heart surged again painfully as I realized that there was a good chance that the whole crew would come down to get rid of all the crates at once - there would be nowhere left to hide.

Practically hyperventilating, I heard the general noise of the crew above me rise a few levels in both volume and pitch. They were cheering.

Oh god, they had sighted land, hadn't they? Crap, crap, crapcrapcrap. I was dead meat. How on Earth- How on _earth_ was I going to get out of this mess? What had I been _thinking_? Stupid, _stupid_…

I continued to berate myself as the ship continued to sail, more so once I felt the ship slow in its speed, and then more ferociously again once I heard the ship lightly knock onto something wooden - the pier - and even louder footsteps jumping off the deck and landing on the wooden stand. From what I could tell the top deck was probably in chaos. There were loud muffled shouts commanding the crew members about the ship, telling them to tie the ship to the pier. Before long there were louder footsteps closer to home, belonging to people marching about the other rooms, emptying the cargo and crates.

While I was wondering if I was about to suffer from heart failure.

I kept waiting tensely for the footsteps to migrate their way towards my room and discover me, but, while the number of them seemed to increase tenfold, somehow the footfalls never made their way to my hiding spot. After a while I began to realize that the increase of footfalls had began to decrease again, and before I knew it I was pretty sure that there were only a couple of men left in the bottom of the ship, shuffling around in the room next door.

I heard a heavy _thump_ and came to the conclusion that the pair had dropped a crate as one of them groaned.

"Fer God's sake, why're _we_ the ones that hafta carry the rest of this junk up to the top deck? We should be up there with the rest of the crew, checkin' out the cargo an' making sure nothin's damaged!" the gruff voice continued in its complaint. I glowered. If this guy spent as much time lifting crates as he did complaining I was pretty sure that he'd have the job done by now.

The other man chimed into speech, "'S only a few more crates, once we've got next door empty we'll be all done." Even while being the more optimistic speaker, the man's resolve seemed to crumble at the huffy-sounding grunt that he was given in reply. His optimism appeared to be his only good point, as he had no shame in showing how short his temper was. "Fine!" he snapped roughly, "The cap'n's always tellin' us to use opportunity, so why don't we just go an' find them passengers we have to be so secret about, huh?" there was another _thump_ as his end of the crate was dropped, and more heavy footsteps as the man stalked out of one room and marched down the hallway.

Despite what I had heard the man say, I cowered as he strode past my door, still terrified of being caught. However, the footsteps didn't even pause outside my door, and although the creak of the floorboards were frighteningly similar to the creak of the door hinges, the feared noise never came.

Which made me wonder… what had he meant by secret passengers? Were they keeping ninjas below deck? No, that was silly… secret passengers… surely… this wasn't some kind of illegal immigrant transport ship? …Was there even such thing as an illegal immigrant in the One Piece world?

I was soon to find out, as a few moments later the marching of the man that had been so threatening to me before came back towards the room I was hiding in, with what sounded like a bunch of light-footed followers. My heart started thrumming again in a panic, only increasing as that dreaded noise of the door hinges creaking open sounded loudly in my ears.

"The crates in 'ere need t'be brought up to the top deck, got it? An' don't go messin' about or you'll be sorry for it."

One set of heavy footsteps left, and were soon joined by another pair of heavy feet as the pair of men that had been left to finish the job abandoned their posts.

By this point, I was terribly curious. My heart was still hammering against my rib cage and my mind was still full of fear, but I couldn't help but just edge forwards, just a little bit, and then peek around the edge of the crate, just to see what the man had been talking about…

I retreated abruptly and sat stock-still. Crap. That had been a really bad idea. Why did I _do_ that? Urgh.

What I had seen thanks to my peeking-endeavour was a small group of men. One or two of them had looked quite young - perhaps around my age, maybe a little older. But what _really_ creeped me out was that they were all horribly gaunt. Their dark skin looked like it had been stretched across their skeletons, and there were darker bruise-like shadows around their faces and arms. Their clothes weren't rags, per se, but were definitely on their way to joining that club.

They were already doing as they had been told, silently and surely. While they all looked like they hadn't had enough to eat for weeks, they still seemed to have a good amount of strength in their arms, and some of them had already lifted one crate and were carrying it out of the room.

Of course all I was doing was sitting frozen behind a crate with "what do I do?" on loop in my head.

"…you haven't got time to sit and rest."

I flinched at the voice, with a heavy accent that I didn't recognise, and turned around slowly to see a boy staring down at me. He had one hand on the top of the crate and his other hand at his side, and was giving me a look that made me shiver. He was looking _at_ me, that was obvious, but at the same time he seemed to be looking _into_ me. I dropped my gaze, the feeling of somebody looking into not my eyes, but my soul, giving me a light chill. To my relief, the feeling lifted as soon as I averted my eyes.

"If you don't stand up, you'll get in trouble. Help me with this box."

I obeyed him, looking anywhere but his unsettling silver eyes. His skin was lighter than the other's in the room, but he still looked incredibly bony. He was wearing what might once have been a normal shirt with no sleeves, but the bottom of it had been ripped off, revealing a tight stomach and showing ribs. He wore knee-length shorts that were tight around his waist, only emphasizing his thinness more. His elbows looked bony and sharp, as did what I could see of his knees.

Once I had stood to my full height, I accidentally met his eyes again. I was ready for that piercing feeling to hit me again, but it didn't come. Instead, the boy's eyes widened slightly. "You're _tall_ for a woman."

And he was right, I guess - I stood quite a few inches taller than he did. I pulled a slight face - if the poor guy had been able to eat properly, then maybe there wouldn't be such a large difference.

The boy appeared to think that I was just another of their group, which was easy enough to go along with. But the one worry that stuck in my mind was that I _was_ tall, and female, and blonde, and that all of the people that I had seen so far that were a part of the 'secret passengers' had dark, tufty hair. If I wasn't careful, I was going to be caught out really quickly…

I suddenly noticed that the boy was wearing a flat-cap, and I was struck by an idea.

"C-can I… could I borrow your cap, please?"

I was afraid that he would immediately say no and tell me to get on with lifting crates, but instead he seemed to humour me, raising his eyebrows and touching the rim of the cap with his spare hand. "…Why?" he asked suspiciously.

I didn't have to act when I gave him an uneasy smile. "It's just, my hair, because it's so long it gets in the way, and I could probably fit it into the cap and keep it out of my face…"

Again, I wasn't sure if he would buy it, and for a few seconds I was absolutely sure that he wouldn't, but then the hand touching the cap picked it up off his head and handed it to me. He tried to give me a smile, but somehow it looked more like a pained grimace. "Keep it for as long as you need it."

I beamed at him and thanked him for his kindness, winding my matted hair around into some kind of bun and then shoving the hat on top. Miraculously, it held. (The back of my mind piped up, "I wear a flat-cap now. Flat-caps are cool.")

Then it was back to the job on hand. The crate was heavy, but I was shocked at how easy it was for me to lift it. If the crate hadn't had such a large shape, I probably could have lifted it by myself. As I and the boy carried it up towards the top deck, somehow getting it up the stairs, I puzzled over this fact. How on earth could my muscles have grown so quickly in less than a week? With no food, especially…

I was a little less dumfounded when I realized just how much carrying a heavy crate from the lower deck to the upper deck had drained me. Upon getting onto solid, er, wood, I was ready to collapse. My strength had somehow grown, even without sustenance, but without food my stamina had remained being absolutely _crap_. How that made any sense I did not know.

Taking a rest for a few moments, we both noticed that the other men (and women, I now realized) that had been carrying the cargo onto the top deck were now helping each other to get the crates onto the pier, and were then being ordered to guard their crates 'with their lives'.

Gathering our strength to do the same, we lifted the crate and somehow got it down onto the pier with the help of two older-looking men from the secret-passengers-society. I nodded my thanks to them as we continued our path to the outskirts of the crate-group. Once the crate was on solid ground, the boy and I were ordered to keep a look out for anyone suspicious that may try to blend in with the group and steal some of the cargo. I complied, despite the fact that my thoughts just kept running in the whole "you need to run now, you really really need to run like, right now, go, gogogo" cycle. If I was going to do this correctly without any or too many people running after me, I needed to get the timing right. I could think of this as a game easily enough. A game where you only have one life and you have to get the timing right first time or else you end up with a whole load of baddies chasing after you and you either have to shake them off or fight, neither of which I thought I could possibly do with my body in the state that it was.

It was just a _real_ shame that it always took me two or three tries to get through those game scenarios.

I kept one eye on the crew as they shuffled around each crate, opening them with crowbars and then closing them again. It came to a point where nearly all of their backs were turned, and yet, despite this, I just couldn't let myself go, there was too much at risk…

"If you're going to run, you need to do it now."

I jumped at the voice and turned to its origin, The boy who had leant me his cap was looking at me, his eyes feeling like they were piercing my soul again. "Run, _now_. Don't get caught, or they'll kill you."

His voice suddenly giving me a burst of confidence, I nodded at him and gave him an uncharacteristic smirk. "They won't."

And then I made a run for it.

* * *

><p>The captain of the cargo ship wasn't necessarily a kind man. In fact, usually, he leant more towards the nasty sides of things. He let people who wanted to leave their home islands travel on his ship, which could be considered as a good deed, but his price as a chauffeur was that the passengers that he had to keep as a secret from the marines who liked to check his ship every now and again had to do what they were told. Effectively, they were the ship's slaves.<p>

But, this boy in particular… He did what he was told, and he answered every question given to him, but there had always been a look of defiance in his eyes. He had been on the ship for a long time, probably longer than most of the other passengers. The captain usually wouldn't allow such a thing - you joined the ship, you did work on the ship, then you left the ship.

However, the captain didn't mind that so much because the boy was a good and obedient worker.

But this time, the boy had defied him. Free stowaways were not allowed on the ship - they were killed on sight. And yet, this boy had found a stowaway, he had helped her blend in with the group, and then had helped her get away.

Sure, he could stand there the way he usually did, like he had something to be proud of. He could tell them the same story over and over again, that he had thought that she was another passenger on the ship and she had just spontaneously ran off. But the captain knew the truth, all because of that defiant look in his eye that had suddenly gotten a little bit brighter.

Something would have to be done about this boy. He had to go.

* * *

><p>I kept on running the way I had always imagined that I'd run if I was being chased - in through alleyways, forwards, left ways, right ways, backwards, and then forwards some more. It was an understatement to say that I was thoroughly lost by the time I ran out of breath (which was thankfully a bit later than when my muscles had started to scream at me). I practically collapsed against a wall, using it as a leaning-post so that I could catch my breath. My legs and lungs were burning, and my knees were shaking. I literally couldn't do anything other than stand there, supported by a wall.<p>

It took quite a lot longer than I would have liked for that feeling to recede enough for me to not feel like jelly, but seeing as I was no longer being chased I supposed that it wasn't a particularly _terrible_ thing.

But by now my stomach was burning instead. I felt queasy, like I was going to be sick, only there was absolutely nothing in my stomach to up-chuck. I really, _really_ needed something to eat. Heck, I needed something to drink. Somewhere to sleep would be nice, too.

Clueless as to where I was or where I was going to find anything, I began to wander the streets. There weren't many people about, although most that _were_ out chose to stare at me in my mucky, tattered clothing. After a while I realized that I was still wearing the boy's cap - and that I didn't even know the kid's _name_ - and upon taking it off to look at it my greasy locks fell around my neck to its usual shoulder-length. I grimaced. I had no doubt that it looked absolutely terrible. Regretting taking the cap off, I placed it back onto my head, hoping that it may hide some of my dirt-induced hideousness.

Eventually my wandering came to a happier conclusion. More people kept springing up to stare at me disgustedly and chat to their friends amiably. They all seemed to be walking in one direction, so I followed them in hope of some kind of street market.

For once, my wish was fulfilled, and just around the next street corner I was met with the sight of masses of people haggling with stall owners for fruits and vegetables and fish and meats and herbs and god-knows what else. My hunger-starved mind only let a little part of my brain go into its usual panicky don't-talk-to-people state. The most part of my mind told me that I needed to go and ask the stall owners for food, and even beg for it if I had to. Stealing the food didn't even come to mind - I'd had too many run-ins with possible danger recently, and even subconsciously my mind knew that I didn't want to get into trouble again.

Immediately I crossed off the meats and fish stalls from my list of people to ask for food, seeing as eating raw meat was a terrible idea and I didn't have anything to cook them on. That left me with the many fruit and vegetable stalls, as well as the few bread stalls that seemed to have cropped up while I wasn't looking.

My nervousness starting to bubble up underneath my skin, I took a deep breath and stood in line with the rest of the gossiping men and woman that were waiting to be served at the bread stall. I was amazed at the style that each loaf and bun had been made with. They were all twisted into intricate knots and twirls. This bread didn't just look tasty - it looked like art, as well. Because of this, I knew that I wasn't going to get anything pretty much as soon as I joined the queue, but, swallowing my shyness and doubt, I kept going, hoping against hope that, maybe, I was wrong and that my luck would pull through.

The man took one look at me and my empty hands and knew what I was going to ask immediately. "Sorry, kid, I don't have the money or the stock to feed hobos."

The only thing I could do was smile weakly, mutter a small "Thank you, anyway…" and wander back into the bustling crowd. I guess that I _was_ a hobo now, and, really, I couldn't blame the man. These people had to make a living off their stalls and hard work.

But I needed to keep myself living, too.

My stomach's frustrated growling rising at the same rate that my resolve was shrinking between each stall only to get pretty much the same answers every time quickly started to piss me off. Nobody had the money or the time for me, and they could (and would) tell me that before I could even say a word.

Trying to calm myself down, I reasoned with myself that I didn't really have the right to get pissed off at people for making a living. Several sayings ran through my head, such as "It's a dog-eat-dog world" and "Every man for himself". I scolded myself for thinking up quotes at a time like this once my mind had gone as far as to righteously quote An Inspector Calls, "We are one body. We are responsible for each other.".

It was with this foul mood hanging over my head that I ventured to the next fruit stall. There wasn't much of a queue outside of this one, but there was still one to stand in line with. I did so huffily. Upon getting to the front, I didn't even bother trying to speak - I just looked at the woman. It wasn't a glare, but it wasn't exactly a pleasant expression either.

The woman, her frizzy pale-ginger hair hanging around her face, smiled at me brightly. "Yes, love?"

My annoyed attitude dropped like a stone and suddenly my shy politeness was rushing back into my head. "I, uh, do you…" the fact that the woman hadn't just brushed me off immediately after seeing me like I had thoroughly expected her to had completely thrown me off. I stared at her blankly. She really did seem like a lovely lady who was only just being introduced to the idea of old age. The typical housewife-like woman, with 'curves in all the right places' as one may say. A part of the back of my mind wondered if she baked.

Even the woman's pale blue eyes smiled as she asked warmly, her voice chipper, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Well, if this woman wouldn't help me, I didn't know who would.

"Is there any chance… Would it be possible for you to spare some fruit, please?"

The woman's expression seemed to falter for a second as her eyes flickered down my figure and she realized just how thin I actually was. "I'm afraid that I can't spare any fresh harvest, lovey…"

I hardly had enough time to look crest-fallen before she continued, her beaming smile back on her face. "But if you come back behind the stall here with me then you can have what's in the rotten box. It's not great, love, but it's something, and you look like you could use it."

I could have cried.

True to her word, behind the stall there was a small crate filled with fruits of various names and types, some that I recognised and some that I would never be able to name in a hundred years. A lot of them were bruised so badly that they were practically a pulp, but I didn't give much of a damn as I began to stuff my face. The good thing about filling up on fruit was that it half-helped my thirst, as well.

A lot of it tasted horrible. In fact, there were one or two pieces of fruit that had skin so battered and bruised I couldn't tell what colour they were originally meant to be, and there was even one piece that I couldn't stomach after a few bites from the taste and smell, but generally the fruit was in pretty good condition.

Actually, there were quite a few pieces that seemed good and ripe to me. I was puzzled.

"Er, miss…?"

"Call me Penny, darling!"

"…Penny… there's fruit in here that seems alright to me. Why are they in the rotten box?"

"Fruits and vegetables give off a bad smell when they're going off. I don't want to sell bad fruit to my customers! They're loyal regulars, my buyers, and I want to be as good to them as they are to me!"

I nodded my head to the side in contemplated approval. Fair enough, that seemed like a good motto… although the bad smell thing was a bit iffy.

Penny continued to chat happily to me in between serving her customers. I was happy to join in with the conversation; it'd been quite a few days since I'd last had a nice, homey talk with someone else. Once I had told her my name, the woman was even more happy to keep on with her nattering.

"What brings you to our little island of Algreen then, little miss Elmo?"

Humouring the woman for her choice of words - 'little', pah, I was pretty sure that I was quite a bit taller than her - I replied truthfully. "I was a stowaway on a ship." The name Algreen echoed in my head. I'd heard that somewhere before…

"Hah! Stowaway! No wonder you're so starved, you must have been sailing for at least a week!" I let the woman draw her own conclusion. It was easier than telling her the exact truth, anyway. "Well, well." She let out a bark of laughter and turned to me for a second, grinning at me with a look in her eye that I could have sworn was proudness, and then turned back to her next customer. "You could have just used your womanly charms to get on board! Kahaha!" her cackling laughter earned her a warm but awkward smile from the man she was serving and a freaked out look from yours truly. 'Womanly charms'? Was she _joking_?

Wiping a mock-tear from her eye, the woman let out a sigh. "Ahh, but I suppose that these days there are less gentlemen sailors out on the sea and more horrible ruffians out on the prowl. Mmm, yes, it was probably better for you to stowaway, love, good on you."

I somehow got the idea that Penny had once been the type to use her 'womanly charms' with 'gentlemen sailors'.

Biting into what I would have to call a deformed pear, I continued to listen to Penny as she seemed to get over her own inside joke and get onto 'more serious business'. "In that case, what are your plans for your stay in Algreen, missy?"

There was that name again. "I don't have any."

"Oh?"

"No. I… I don't have any money, and I don't have anywhere to go. I guess I'll find somewhere at some point…" I really wasn't hinting at anything, but for some reason whenever I said something that could be taken as a hint but wasn't meant to be, people took the hint.

"Ah, well, we'll see about that. I know someone who owes me a few favours…"

* * *

><p><strong>Uh, yeah, 5,600 words plus later... Eh, whatever, I guess nobody's complaining.<strong>

**But it _is_ annoying. I keep writing overboard, and yet somehow I'm _still_ never getting as far into the chapter as I want to be getting. Urgh. At this rate I'm going to end up a whole chapter behind at some point. I don't _wanna_ write an extra chapter.. *whines* ...Oh well, whatever. I'll make do with what I'm getting and that's that.**

**I'm no grumbling ruffian BT **

**Uhm, yeah, still no concept art this chapter, so to speak. I haven't scanned what I've done so far and seeing as none of it's really relevant at the moment... It'll all be more relevant next chapter. Hopefully. If I don't set myself back again. *sigh***

**Oh well. Until next chapter. (And I won't repeat myself anymore, you know the drill.)  
><strong>


	4. Of Bakeries and Junk Shops

**A/N: The new word limit is 6,000 words, okay? I haven't gone over that yet, so we'll go with that. Yep.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four:<strong> **Of Bakeries and Junk Shops**

Penny certainly seemed fond of her favours. At the end of the 'selling day', as she liked to call it, I helped her pack up with more enthusiasm than I'd been able to show to anything for days. While the chipper woman's stall didn't seem to be the most popular place in town, and didn't get flooded by people like some of the stalls further up the street had done, most of what had been on the fresh fruit shelves that day had been sold. In fact, the little produce that had been left over could all fit into a crate that was even smaller than the rotten fruit crate.

Penny spotted my amazed owlish blinking and cackled. "I only bring enough fruit for the regulars, and a little excess. Leaves room for one or two new customers if they fancy a taste of the good stuff!"

Everything packed up and ready to go, Penny had instructed me to pile the shelves (which had been easy enough to deconstruct), both the rotten-fruit-crate and the leftover-fruit-crate and a small locked box which I assumed was where Penny kept the money on top of the table. It was then the awkward task of carrying the table between us, Penny at the front and me at the back, without tipping everything off of it. Luckily for Penny I was much better at this sort of thing than keeping my diet in order, even when there _was_ food around, so there was only one instance of the near-empty rotten-fruit-crate slipping off due to the lack of weight holding it down.

With Penny in the lead, we had marched down streets and alleyways, with the frizzly-haired woman nattering all the while. At one point I asked where we were going, but realized as she gave the answer that it didn't really matter what she said because I didn't have a clue where we were in the first place.

She continued to give me her entire family history, starting with her grandfather, then her grandmother, then her parents, then a little about herself and skipping right to her eldest son. And, as you'd expect from a doting parent, Penny had one helluvalot to say. Her first son was the eldest of five children, and owned a farm up on the hills behind the town. His farm was the most successful on the island (I took this as exaggeration, but at the same time I didn't let myself completely doubt it), and he had employed his younger brothers (the second and third eldest, twins) as the lead farmers on the fields.

"I buy some of my fruit from them myself," Penny sang as we continued to walk, me carrying the crate of leftover fruit and she carrying the nearly-empty crate with the locked box sat in the bottom. At some point in the family-history lesson we had left the table and the shelves at two separate locations - it appeared that the objects had been loaned to Penny as a repayment of some kind of favour she had done for them years ago.

She eyed the way that I was carelessly carrying the crate. "Careful with those, love, they need to be good for when they're made into a cake!" She smiled warmly at me again when I met her gaze, and I shifted the way I was carrying the crate slightly, so that the fruit wasn't shifting so much with each movement. Now I would feel bad if the fruit bruised… I was feeling bad already, simply because I hadn't thought about the 'correct' way to carry a crate. But at least now my question of whether Penny could bake or not had been answered.

"Oh, yes, and I haven't told you about my fourth child!" the topic was brought back up as we came to the door of a large, round-topped building. The structure itself screamed factory, but the mill that was attached to the far side of the building said otherwise. Penny knocked on the door with a beaming smile on her face. "That child of mine owns this very bakery-"

The door opened inwards with a sudden _"whoosh"_ and the beaming face of the short old lady was met with the tall and compact figure of a very muscled man with a face full of… I tried to name the emotion. Contempt? Perhaps. Either way, whoever the man was, he really didn't seem to appreciate the presence of my saviour. I found this puzzling - even the men who had probably been called out from their family time to help us put the table and shelves away from the stall were happy to see Penny. I stared at the man. This… this couldn't be Penny's fourth son, could it? No, no… I shook my head to myself lightly. He didn't hold any resemblance to her at all…

"What do you want, Penny." it was a question, but it was said like a statement, and even though the man had used her name he somehow made it sound like an insult. When I looked back to his face I saw him looking at me, but as I met his eyes they turned back to the 'problem' at hand.

It was then that I found out that Penny was masterful in the way of controlling her expressions. She continued to beam happily at the bloke, her face _shining like the bloody sun_. Her voice gave her away, however, as she ground out the words "I wish to see the owner of the bakery, brute." her words sounded strained.

The man glared at her. "I _am_ the owner, and it's _Bruce_, not _brute_."

Penny hummed triumphantly, as if she had just scored a goal in some kind of sports game. "Brute, Bruce, it's all the same to me- oh, but, I want to see the _other_ owner, honey, so if you please…" She pushed past the taller man with a surprising show of strength. He glared at her again as she waltzed past, and then turned his gaze to me. I shrunk and tried to hide behind my crate.

The man- Bruce- seemed to contemplate closing the door without me, but I think that carrying the fruit had been my trump card because after he had realized that that was what was in the crate he grunted at me and nodded for me to enter the building. I scurried in, not wanting to anger the man by being slow.

I couldn't help but feel like we'd gone underground once I'd scuttled into what seemed to be a kitchen. The room was lit by yellowy-orange light and the walls seemed to be made of white clay. The worktops were light-chocolate-brown coloured wood, and each counter seemed to be moulded into the walls. The floor was fiery, orange tiled stone. I fell in love with the place almost as soon as I entered it.

There were two tables; one large one in the centre of the room opposite the doorway we had entered by, where Penny had put her crate down, and another table to the side where all of the more kitcheny equipment was (a stove and some sort of fridge-like-contraption, as well as some pots and pans), surrounded by chairs. There was some kind of archway into a corridor behind it. I paused near the entrance to the room, unsure of what to do as Penny circled the first table and brought her attention back to me. She pointed to the other table.

"Just pop that over there, lovey, and you might as well take a seat while I have a little chat with dear… _Bruce_."

I did what I was told quite briskly, placing the crate exactly where I had seen her pointing and sitting in the nearest direct seat.

At first I sat rigidly - this was obviously a place that Penny knew well, so she had probably been here many times before, but at the same time it was quite obvious that the man owned the place and very definitely didn't think that she had the right to waltz in and take over the place. My instant thought was that she was going to get kicked out at any moment, and that I'd have to dash out with her.

The beginning of the conversation definitely tried to confirm my thoughts, as the man walked into the room and took his place opposite Penny. "What right do you think you have to just barge your way in here, old woman?"

She took the question as an insult. "Why, hon, you may think that you own this place, but you seem to forget that the woman who owns more than half of the place - your _wife, _honey, _happens_ to be my _daughter_-"

"Don't give me that crap, we own it equally. Don't think that just because my wife bought the place in the beginning means I'm not working _just_ as hard, if not _harder_ than she is to keep it going-"

"If you grasp that she owns just as much of it as you do then you should realize that as her _mother_ I have every right to come in here-"

"Being her _mother_ isn't just a _trump card_ for you to be able to come in here whenever you want!"

The argument continued, and after a while, while listening to ridiculous-sounding insults and each element of the argument getting more and more fickle, I realized that these two didn't actually hate each other. This was their relationship - the arguing duo. Penny and Bruce were like Zoro and Sanji. One of them were here first, alright, but that didn't mean that the other was going to give up trying to be number one.

I blinked at my realization. Yes, they were very much like a family…

"Momma-! Oh, hello there- oh, oh dear, are they fighting again?" A petite woman walked into the room through the archway that I was sitting in front of, first noticing the scene before her and then me beside her. I gave her a quick glance (so _this_ was the fourth child, huh?), and then returned my gaze to the woman who had brought me here and the man who had let us in. Then I contemplated my answer.

Raising my eyebrows at the bickering step mother and step son, I came to the conclusion that this bickering was probably an everyday thing. Generally wanting to know the answer, I replied with my own question, "When do they _not_ fight?

The girl stared at me. The she grinned and slapped me on the back. I cringed from the blow as she laughed full-heartedly. "I like you! You got the gist of the situation right away!" She sighed and put her hands on the back of my chair to lean on it. "I think the only time they don't argue is when we're eating. Everybody in our family enjoys a good meal, it's like taboo to bring bad feelings to a dinner table!" she chuckled again.

I rubbed the part of my back where she had hit me awkwardly. It didn't really hurt, but, heck, she was a bit full-on…

"Has she been calling him honey?"

Realizing that the woman was talking to me again, I nodded. "Uh, yeah. A lot."

"Oh, hoho, oh dear." She chuckled. "You know momma doesn't like someone when she starts calling 'em honey. She doesn't like honey at all, see. Gives her a headache." She looked at the arguing pair pityingly. "I was hoping that she'd start to stop calling him that, now, but no. My husband passed the test, after a while, but now they're so used to arguing they can't stop. Hmmm." her baby-blue eyes darted back to me and all of a sudden I felt like I was under a spotlight.

"Who're you then, huh?"

Caught off guard by the feeling of interrogation, my intellectual-mastermind-like answer was a simple "Uhhhh…"

The woman blinked at me blankly, and then went into a flurry of motion. "Oh, oh! I'm sorry! It's polite to introduce yourself before asking someone else's name, right? I'm Calista Bazyl! Call me Callie, though, everyone else does…"

My chest panged.

Calley… Calley was the name of my second fictional child.

Which was a ridiculous thing to get upset about, I told myself, even despite the pain in my chest. They were… well, not… real… per se… but… just because I had travelled to a different world… that didn't mean that I was cut off from my fictional family…

But suddenly this Callie looked so much like I thought my little Calley could look like when she grew up…

"Hey, girlie? Are you okay?" Calista furrowed her eyebrows at me. I realized that I'd zoned out for a few seconds. How rude of me. "You had a really painful look on your face just then, you know." the woman looked really worried. I shook my head at her, my eyes darting to the ground. I really disliked it when people gave me looks like that.

"Ah, sorry. I'm Elmo. Sorry… can I… is it alright if I stick with calling you Calista?"

The woman was really quick when it came to topic changes. "Mmhm! That's just fine! What's your family name, huh?"

It felt a little bittersweet to stick with the surname in my head, but at the same time it felt like the right thing to do. "Carol. Elmo Carol."

"Why do you have to stick your nose in _everywhere_, you old bag?"

Brute- oh god, I was doing it now too- _Bruce's_ latest yell was quite a bit louder than the previous snipings, and it cut through our little conversation like a cleaver cuts through flesh. I saw a flicker of an emotion flash across Calista's face, telling me that she had had far more than enough of her mother and her husband's bickering.

She took a deep breath, her whole body seeming to grow taller in both height and presence as she straightened her stance and put a stern face on her features. "It's so nice to see you two getting along!"

Her voice was shrill and unpleasant, completely different to what one may expect in the usual use of such a phrase.

The mother and husband closed their mouths abruptly, paused, and then stuttered in apology, turning to the new centre of their attention dutifully.

"C-Calista!"

"Callie-"

She didn't give either of them time to come up with some kind of explanation, excuse or apology as she briskly walked towards her mother and forcibly took her hands in her own. "Momma, it's wonderful to see you, I love how great you and Bruce get on nowadays, it makes me _so happy_-" she cut off her own sentence and turned to her husband, putting her hands on his shoulders. "And Bruce, _Bruce_, it's so kind of you to let momma in and welcome our guest, making such a _friendly show_ in front of somebody we don't even know."

The atmosphere now considerably more awkward, with the two eldest and proudest people in the room practically hanging their heads in shame from the obscure telling off and myself twitching at the table, I began to wonder if this really _was_ a usual occurrence. I couldn't imagine that Calista _liked_ playing the bad guy who had to tell the children off…

…but then, ask me an hour ago and I would never have thought that Penny could act like such a child. To her child's husband, and all - the awkwardness of this particular situation was stifling. If this happened _every time_ Penny came to visit, I wouldn't… well, if I was Calista, I wouldn't want to have to deal with it. Sheesh.

Face still shining like the sun through a magnifying glass, Calista practically dragged her two family members over to the table I sat at, pushed them down into the two seats next to me, and then sat down next to me herself. "Well, thank you very much for bringing me some fruit to bake with, momma, I appreciate that…" the crate was slid to one side of the table and then put on the floor below it by the leading lady.

The other two were still sulking, giving each other darting looks that clearly read "This is all _your_ fault.". I continued to study them as Calista moved the crate, and before I realized what I was saying I told the pair off as if they were ten-to-twelve-year-olds in scouts. "You guys are terrible, jeez, take a break from all the glaring."

Everyone paused and looked at me. My face dropped and my mind went into a frenzy of _"Oh my god Elmo you did not just talk to a respectful old woman and a big beefy I-can-knock-you-flat-with-one-punch man as if they were school kids, oh my god oh my god"_.

Calista broke the silence with another full-blown laugh. Hitting me on the back again, she claimed, "I really like this girl!" She let out another laugh and then turned to me, asking, "Have you ever worked with kids, Carol-san?"

Bright red from the embarrassment of telling two people I didn't even _really_ know off, I answered, "Uh, y-yeah, I used to work with a bunch of kids…"

"Haha! They're terrible, aren't they! The arguing is so _petty_-"

"Okay, okay, enough, we know when you're trying to make a fool of us as punishment." Penny huffed at us from across the table, leaning back in her seat with her arms crossed. I glanced at Bruce, but his face was unreadable. I was a little surprised that Penny was sort of defending him, even if it _was_ only to save herself.

Calista gave her an unimpressed look. "I wouldn't have to treat you like a kid if you didn't act like one, momma, _really._" She was not impressed _at all_. "Okay, love, I get what you mean. But now we should really get onto why I brought this dear along with me to visit," she nodded towards me, a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "Though after what I just heard I'm not sure I should be so nice to her anymore~!"

I looked at her with an apologetic sheepish smile. "Sorry, it just came out-"

"No, no, lovey, if there's one thing you learn in this life it's that you can't regret what you say. If you hadn't meant it, you wouldn't have said it."

Bruce grunted in agreement, and Calista rolled her eyes. "Momma, stop trying to teach life lessons, I'm _dying_ from curiosity here!"

I squirmed in my seat uncomfortably. I didn't have a clue what was going on here, only knowing that for some reason _I_ was at the centre of attention, and that made me feel very awkward indeed. Penny just grinned at my discomfort.

"I'd like to put forward your new employee and lodger."

Everyone at the table gawked at her, including myself. Then Calista clapped her hands with a smile, at the same time that Bruce put his hands on the table and said a firm "_No."_

Calista and Penny turned to him with socked, disbelieving and confused eyes.

"Why the hell not?"

"What's wrong with the idea?"

Bruce's initial determination faltered slightly at the look his wife was giving him, but he kept his resolve strong anyway. "She's just a _kid_! And a weak-looking one at that! She wouldn't be able to work in the bakery, let alone pay rent to stay here. I don't think it's a good idea-"

"Not to mention that I can't cook to save my life." I stared at Penny with my eyebrows furrowed. This had been her plan? Her favour? Well, I didn't know what she thought she had up her sleeve, but she could have at least found out if I was fit for her majestic plan first. I couldn't help but be slightly annoyed, even if she _had_ been doing it for my sake.

The woman didn't look at me. Instead, she turned to her daughter expectantly. Calista didn't let her down. "The job that needs doing doesn't need cooking skills, Elmo, and Bruce, I bet you anything that this girl is stronger than she looks." She sent me another beaming smile. I was starting to think that I didn't deserve all of this kindness that these women were deciding to show me. My mind then went on to the thought of karma. Was I just being prepared for a whole load of bad stuff?

Not a comforting thought.

"And anyway," Penny spoke up again, "The wages you pay your employees could cover living and eating costs, and still leave a little extra for Elmo to save up with. She's a travelling girl," the old lady winked at me, "Even if she's no good at the job, I'm sure it won't be _too_ long before she's out of your hair."

Oi.

Bruce narrowed his eyes at me and for a moment alarm bells went flashing off around my head, _"Big scary muscled man glaring at me, ohgodohgodohgod"_, and then his eyes relaxed and he looked at Penny, stating, "If she's not any good, I won't keep her."

Calista's face lit up and she pushed herself out of her chair to her feet. "You mean you're alright with employing her? Bruce! You won't regret this, I swear on it!" choosing to ignore her husband's suddenly unsure oh-dear-I-walked-right-into-that-one expression, Calista practically jumped over to hug him and kiss his cheek, giving a bewildered me a wink as well as giving one to her mother as well. I stared at the pair; mother and daughter, two women who seemed to be able to get things done.

Then, as Calista released her confounded husband and encouraged her mother to get up and help her make a fruit pie of some sort, we stared at each other blankly across the table. I blinked at Bruce.

"Everyday stuff, huh?" my voice high-pitched and disbelieving. I suddenly had a job and lodgings, man.

"No, not really." He seemed just as disbelieving as I did.

The two women giggled behind me.

A conspiracy, I tell you.

* * *

><p>The next few weeks of my life proved to be, while very consistent, altogether interesting. I thanked whatever god that may be watching over me (with a side note of 'you're-still-getting-hell-to-pay') that the job I had to do - the one that Calista kept trying to convince me was easy, simple, but worth the pay - was actually as simple as she had insisted.<p>

However. If you did it once, it was an easy job. If you did it twice, three times, maybe five times, it could still be considered as an easy job.

But if you had done it a bazillion times for the past five weeks you would agree with me that it wasn't an easy job, not at all, and that it was horribly repetitive. Without some form of chatting every half an hour or so or some sort of music playing in the background, it was _incredibly_ boring. And it made my arms ache.

In a bakery, I'd guess that you have the people who mix the ingredients together and make the initial dough, those who put the dough in some kind of giant fridge to set, those who take out the set dough and give it to the people with the important job of shaping the dough, and then the shaped dough was put onto a just-under-two-metre-wide metal tray and put into the furnace-oven-thing. There were people looking after the oven-furnace, and then people who were taking out the finished, fresh and ready-to-eat bread out somewhere else.

My job - my _interesting, wonderful_ job - was to carry a tray of bread from a gigantic rack that was next to the bread-shapers and take it to the oven, put it in the correct place, and then repeat.

And repeat.

And repeat.

So much _fun_.

Like I'd mentioned earlier, if perhaps there had been some music playing, it would have been more bearable. Perhaps if there were people close by to chat with, even if only for short wisps of conversation, it would be more bearable. All I could think was that no _wonder_ this job had had a vacancy, people must go crazy out of their _minds_ doing this bloody profession. Anyone who could stick it would either have to be incredibly optimistic or terribly dull. Did I mention that carrying metal trays full of dough was _murder_ for your arms? (I was gonna end up like macho man at this rate.)

Mind you, from what I had seen, the other bread-to-furnace people, and even the furnace-to-elsewhere people didn't seem horribly bright. Muscly, but not cheerful. Dull and grey stained clothes, slouched stance, blank or pissed off expressions…

…they all fit the bill, but none of them seemed to be able to give any good conversation. Pity, really.

But that didn't matter anyway because for some reason my furnace was completely out of the way to the rest of them. I practically had my own private oven.

This would've been great if it was winter, but it wasn't, it was spring or summer and very warm and the heat was _very_ uncomfortable, thankyouverymuch.

…Moving away from boring topics such as jobs, as much time as my work schedule took away from me, towards the end of every week I'd have the Friday afternoon off and then the Saturday completely free. It was probably a good thing that my days off stopped at the Sunday, because I think that if I knew that I was off work on a Sunday then I'd probably go into a comatose state of _sleeeeeeeeeppppp_. Sunday was sleep day, and it always had been for me. Well, until I travelled to a different world. And got a job.

Being just as slow at noticing the state of my clothes as Penny had been at realizing how thin I had been (perhaps a family trait), Calista had practically dragged me to my new room, thrown me in, dashed off, and then come back and chucked some cloth at me, throwing my flat-cap off my head.

After wrangling the fabric off my face and from around my neck, I realized that the spontaneous cloth-throwing had actually been a throwing of clothes. Calista had smiled at me and told me to use the bath in the bathroom to clean up. Then something about the trousers, but I didn't catch it.

After washing all of the dirt out of my hair, I felt a hundred times better. However, it was only after I'd put my glasses, my watch, my new clothes and the flat-cap back on that I can say that I honestly felt _right_. The trousers were the right size to fit me, but the leg length was way too short, so I rolled them up into knee-length shorts. My purple vans shoes were tattered and more brown than purple, but I couldn't bring myself to not wear them. My new shirt was a white woman's blouse, which I rolled the sleeves of up to past my elbows. Somehow, the flat-cap just… _fitted_.

I almost looked like a new person, with my hair all wavy without the use of straighteners. I definitely felt like something was different, but in a good way.

I was thrilled to think that I almost looked like a pirate.

* * *

><p>As I'd said before, I got Friday afternoons and Saturdays off. You'd think that I might take this time to immediately dash off into the town and explore.<p>

However. I was no Luffy. I couldn't let myself just run off into god-knows-where - I'd get lost, and not have a clue how to get back.

That's why for the first half-a-day-off I had I just wandered around the house part of the bakery, basically making a nuisance of myself. But that was okay, because Bruce worked in the Bakery overseeing everything all the time, and it was actually quite rare to see Calista in the house before the sun had started to set.

If anything, I was only being a nuisance to myself.

However, by the morning of the second day off, Calista had spotted me lounging in one of the dining chairs and had figured out my dilemma.

"You wanna come around the town with me?"

Calista's 'going around the town' basically consisted of stopping to chat with friends, bargaining with stall owners, and discussing deliveries with shopkeepers. Even still, I learnt the basic layout of the town through her pointings and labellings. By the end of the day I could connect one street to another and could direct us by myself back to the bakery. I knew at least a little more about the town, and felt a little bit more comfortable around the buildings that I was now less lost amongst.

After that, my days off were spent exploring, widening my knowledge of what was where in the town little by little. I became familiar with some shops; books shops, art shops (I bought myself a sketchbook and pencil almost straight away - going for so long without drawing had been almost _painful_), I had even ventured into one or two more approachable-looking clothes shops. But, as you would expect, there were a few shops that I purposely avoided, too, such as more extravagant and intimidating clothes shops, as well as all of the gambling and betting buildings. Not that there were really many of those.

But one shop, in particular, bothered me. Because I wanted to go in there. But somehow it was intimidating. Whenever I went near it I didn't see anyone going in or coming out, and because of all of the objects piled up against the window - chairs, old toy sets, a rocking horse, some more chairs, a couple of boxes - it was impossible to see if anyone was inside.

And as much as I didn't want to, because the stuff inside the shop looked cool and anything _but_ junk, I had no choice but to call it a junk shop because that was what the shop was labelled as. "The Junk Shop". Pretty. Enticing. I was at a loss as to how such a name couldn't attract hundreds, if not millions of customers.

Really.

…But all the same. There really _was_ something about this little, tucked-in-out-of-the-way junk shop. Ever since I had first spotted it, I had thought about entering every time I'd passed it. But the thought of nobody going in or out freaked me out a little. What if the place was actually closed? What if it was a drug-sellers or something? _What if people were lured in there only to get killed by an axe murderer?_

Maybe I was just being stupid.

From across the street I stared at the shop. It was an epic stare-down between an animate, needing-to-blink-soon object and an inanimate, I-don't-even-have-eyes building.

The atmosphere was _electric_.

It was _now_, or it was _never_.

…or next week, but- no, no, shush - _now_, or _never_.

I walked across the street and entered the shop.

* * *

><p><strong>*Sigh* Yeah, this is a bit of an odd chapter, and I'm definitely going to have to do a catch-up chapter when I come back from camp, because now I'm DEFINITELY behind and that is no good, nosiree.<strong>

**So, uh, yeah, camp. I'm going camping from this Saturday to next Saturday now, and so don't expect a chapter next Tuesday and don't be too hopeful for one the Tuesday after that, either, because all I'll probably want to do after coming home from a scout camp full of a bunch of kids who don't listen to me very well is sleep. Unless, of course, I break my leg or something like that and come home from camp early, by which case, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.**

**As for concept art, I'm going to stop telling you that it's the next chapter, oh wait, the chapter after that, or maybe the next one because I'm terrible with this sort of thing. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you when it's actually up. Is that okay with you guys? Cool. XD**

**Hm. So. I'm leaving you with some sort of cliffhanger and Elmo telling herself to shush while having an epic stare down with a building. Sounds, uh, good to me. Have a good few weeks without me, guys. Until the next chapter!**


	5. Of Creepy Old Men and Reasons To Move On

**Chapter 5: Of Creepy Old Men and Reasons To Move On**

In places that I thought people may judge me for shopping in, in a good way, bad way, or with some sort of peculiar 'that's out of character, isn't it?', I would always start doing some real-life acting. My shoulders would relax and my legs would traipse around reluctantly, and my eyes would look bored and tired. Sometimes I didn't even do this on purpose. It just… took over. Like clouds crossing the sun. Regrettably, in this mode I would sigh, a _lot_.

Which, unfortunately, was what gave me away.

"Looking for anything in particular, missus?"

My fingers twitched at my sides as I turned to the man behind the cluttered desk of the junk shop, giving him a fleeting once-over before averting my eyes to the many other objects that filled the dark room. "No, thank you." My voice sounded quieter to my ears than I had meant it to sound.

Truth be told, the old man scared me. It was pretty obvious that he was over the age of fifty - probably closer to the sixty-plus side of life, though I couldn't really be sure because my own Dad was around 58 and he looked about 60 - due to his wrinkled face and his thin skin, his veins quite obvious around the muscle of his arms. His skin had a leathery look to it, as if the man had spent a lot of his life out in the sun, and he looked like he had taken good care of himself over the years, his arms very buff and from what I could see of him, his body structure still seemed pretty lean, rather than starting to gather body fat the way that many people do as they get older. In the shadow of the room, his figure and face were shadowed, adding to his fear-factor.

This was without mentioning the tattoos that accompanied his standing-out veins along his skin. The man had some kind of seagull-in-the-distance tattoo on his forehead - three above each other with a line down the centre to join them together - somewhat hiding the furrowing wrinkles that I had no doubt rested there. Coming out from under his left shirt-sleeve - he was wearing some kind of short-sleeved button-up shirt with a pocket on one side - was some kind of monster head, with huge, spiky teeth coming down past the man's elbow. The monster itself wasn't very creative in looks, but its eyes were still intimidating and fierce. On the back of his left hand he had some kind of compass-like tattoo. On the forearm of his right arm there was some sort of tribal-like diamond.

And despite his look of an ageing man, he still had a full head of gingery-sandy hair, parted on the left and all… quiffy. His eyes were thin and stretched, and there was just something about that wide smile of his in this light that made him look incredibly creepy.

So I doubt that I have to express how creeped out I was.

For a few moments I was left to my own devices - or, rather, left to fiddle about carefully with the little trinkets that interested me around the closest shelves. I say carefully because, as a parent likes to reinforce to their children when they're at a young age, my father always told me and my sister "Look with your eyes and not with your hands." My Dad was the scary lawman of the house, so we usually complied. Even now his voice rang in my head… however, it was quite hard to see everything about an object in such a cluttered and dim-lighted room, so I _did_ 'look with my hands'. But carefully. Like the goody-two-shoes that I was (hah).

But then, typically, my momentary peace was shattered - along with the chance of other more physical objects getting shattered due to clumsy teenagers who could often be described as "butt-monkeys".

While I had been idly fiddling about with a small mantelpiece wind-up clock, the man behind the cluttered desk had stood up and come up behind me, silently (_creeeeeepyyyy_), and without letting me know of his presence before hand just said, "Sure you ain't looking for something, missus?"

Frightened out of my _skin_, I stumbled sideways, knocking into a chair, which duly began to fall sideways, with all of the small objects that had been lying on its lap sliding off one by one.

At first this wasn't too bad, because the chair fell right onto another chair, of which the small objects could slide onto, and, plus, the second chair was a lot more sturdy and wouldn't fall over, even after such a push.

However, it _did_ slide to the side from the force, which knocked it into the handle of some sort of broom or mop or something which had been precariously jutting out from underneath a large pile of rather heavy-looking objects.

The freaking horror that must have been written all over my face, man.

Imagine the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Imagine those sections of it starting to slide forwards, starting from the top and moving downwards, sliding off one by one and making the most diverse-sounding racket at the same time.

That.

_That_.

My life, please destroy it.

It was a 'junk-slide', the old man would tell me in a few moments, after the racket had quietened down and the sliding objects had come to a stop, barricaded by the window.

Some kind of clock fell down from the pile and bounced off the floor, landing a few inches away. I could hear its insides jingling and grinding as they hit the ground, and I flinched again, staring at the poor time-keeping object with horror-filled dismay. "I'm s-sorry!" I squeaked to the man, unable to turn around and look him in the eye.

"Ahhhhh," to my relief he didn't sound angry, "Don't worry. Happens at least once a month. Call it a junk-slide." He scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. "Whatcha _really_ need to look out for is when you can hear the cracking glass - don't want that, it's a pain to replace."

I breathed out slowly, trying to calm my heart beat into something more calm and human-like, rather than dying and mouse-like. Putting both hands up to my face, I rubbed my eyes under my glasses and then adjusted them after their disturbance. Sheesh. The klutz has returned, yay. So much yay.

Unfortunately this seemed to bring the old man's attention back to me. "Nice watch you have there, missus. Fancy selling it?"

I turned to him, finally able to look him in the eye. With furrowed eyebrows and widened eyes, I stated, "No."

He smiled at me with his creepiness, his expression suggesting that he would convince me somehow or another. His creepiness coming back two-fold, I decided that it would _probably_ be a good time to leave while I was ahead. And not knocking stuff over.

"Sure you won't? I'll trade it with something, you know I've got some nice stuff in here~"

I shook my head and gave him a stern look. Like hell he was getting this watch, this was _my _watch. I had decided _long_ before coming to the One Piece world that I was going to keep using it for as long as it worked - coming into the OP world had just reinforced that thought. "No deal, good sir, and I must now take my leave."

He seemed amused by my last statement, but relented anyway. "Ahh, alright. Come again soon!"

As I opened and shit the door behind me, I face-palmed and let out a quiet growl. "Like _hell_, mister-creepy-old-person!" I murmured to myself.

With a sigh I straightened myself up and began the long-ish walk back to the bakery. I'd hardly spent any time in the Junk Shop, and yet already it felt like it had been a long and tiresome day.

The streets weren't badly crowded - because it was Saturday most of the people that were usually milling about were instead bustling around in the marketplace. I frowned at the thought - I hadn't seen Penny since I'd first come to, what was it, Algreen? Yeah. And I'd gotten to know the town better - I could now navigate the whole place by myself, not to mention that I was starting to explore the shortcuts and alleyways. The great thing about this town was that there didn't seem to be many thuggish characters about. As long as I was careful, I shouldn't run into any shady characters.

…As much as the idea that I hadn't seen Penny to thank her since she'd gotten me a job at her daughter's (and Bruce's) bakery bothered me, I decided that today just wasn't a good day to go and see her. The streets were more empty than usual, which suggested that there were more people at the market, and that would be an absolute _pain_ to navigate, and Penny would be swept off her feet anyway. Not to mention that some of the residents of Algreen still recognised me as the scrawny kid that had first arrived here, mucky and starving. Even though I now looked healthy, albeit still a little thin, and as clean as a whistle, my reputation had forever been tarnished. Not to mention that flat caps _were not_ the height of fashion.

But, what the hell. Why should I care that I had overheard some women saying that I shouldn't have shown myself in such a state to begin with, that I should have just stayed in the shadows or died quietly in a corner, that begging for food was such a shameful act. Why should I care if they thought my hat was ugly? I thought that _their_ hats were ugly, with their big poofy leaves and feathers, with plastic grapes and such on the side. My hat was much simpler, much less of a show but much more of a character.

The _epitome_ of _cool_.

…Anyway. As I re-continued my pondering over the name Algreen - I'm _sure_ that I've heard it before _somewhere_ - I wandered close to one of my favourite shortcuts. Just before I turned to walk down it, something in the beginning of the market crowds caught my eye. I paused and strained my eyes, trying to see exactly what it was that had drawn my gaze to the crowds. Subconsciously I thanked the sky that it was cloudy today, because if it had been sunny then looking into the distance would have been freaking impossible.

Hair. That was it - did I recognise it? Who's was it? One of the girls from sch- shut up Elmo, you damn idiot, that's impossible. You don't recognise that person's hair, dumbshit, just go back to the bakery already.

Following my own instructions while telling myself off for falling for my own tricks of the mind, I walked down the alleyway with my thoughts focused on my own berating. I needed to become more aware of my own thoughts and what I was thinking and letting myself believe.

Of course, while thinking about how I needed to be more aware of things, I didn't notice the sound of running footsteps coming up behind me until it was too late, and I was flung around and punched in the gut before getting pushed up against the wall.

"You! You're still _alive_? I left you by that lighthouse to _die_, why the hell can't you follow _simple instructions_? Why the hell are you _here_?"

I was too busy spluttering and trying to breath after being so forcefully winded the pay attention to what I was being asked, but I'd have had to have been cursed with the worst memory in the world to not recognise that voice.

_Symphony_.

"…_So where do you come from?" "Tellus."_

"_Where's that?"_

"_Several miles North of Algreen."_

"…_Where's Algreen?"_

So bloody _stupid_. My memory was a sieve at the worst of times. I was so bloody screwed.

I felt a forceful hand take my jaw and move my head vehemently so that our eyes were meeting, but at the same time I felt my strength leave me and my body go weak. My throat let out some kind of weird gurgling noise.

Somehow - and I don't know how, I really don't - this reaction made Symphony even angrier than she already was. Her hand that was on my jaw moved to my neck, and with a surprising show of strength she lifted me off the ground, still roughly pushing my body against the brick wall. "You've-" her eyes narrowed darkly and her mouth morphed into a horrid sneer. "I can't believe you've- Oh, I hate you, I _really_ hate you, I hope you know that, you _absolute idiot_."

If I'd had the energy I would've flinched at the words, but with the girl's hand crushing my throat mercilessly I couldn't do much more than gurgle in protest. Typically only thinking about irrelevant things while in this death-grip, I noticed that both of Symphony's hands were covered in new elbow-length grey gloves with metal bands around the forearms and wrists. She was also wearing a different dress, with frills around the neckline. Her clothed fingers suddenly squeezed at my neck, as if she could see that my mind was going off track and that she wanted me to pay attention.

With Symphony's hand held against my throat - the left had, I noted dopily in my annoyingly helpless state - I could barely even struggle against her hold. In films, where one of the characters had gotten lifted up by the throat, I'd always sat there thinking 'Kick the damn guy! Flail your legs like you'll never flail them again!'.

I had never realized just how hard that actually was. But there was something about this, something unnatural about it that it scared me. That feeling of the plasticy grey gloves - and, oh, hey, she was wearing a ring on her middle finger, interesting - was chilling me to the bone.

She raised me higher, pressing me against the rough stone wall of the building. I could feel myself beginning to choke as I spluttered, "Sym-Symph-" and then another spluttering of coughs. I still didn't have a clue what I'd done, despite the shorter's angry outburst earlier, which had told me nothing.

"You've ruined _everything,_" she ground out fiercely, her face dark and threatening in the shadow of the alleyway. I swallowed painfully, my heart hammering and my mind screaming at me to do something, _anything_ to get out of this grip, because, _god_, with those eyes she could actually kill me and _bloody hell _did I not want to die without even knowing why I was killed in the first place.

"…No, no, you're right, can't let this hold us back, can we?" For a second the girl's eyes flickered away, but when they came back to meet mine they had gained quite the evil glint. I was confused enough by the way that Symphony had just spoken - was she talking to herself? - but this, this made me ask the kind of question that was always repeated so much in films that it had become cheesy, cliché.

_What was she going to do?_

As I opened my mouth to ask the question aloud, Symphony loosened her grip and my knees jarred painfully as my feet hit the ground again. At my pained yelp the girl's smirk grew wider. She lifted up her right hand, twiddled her fingers as if she was waving at me, and then with a swift shake of her wrist what I could only describe as some sort of sparking grey flame appeared in the palm of her hand.

Now, I'm not sure if you've ever seen a film with this sort of thing in it. I seem to remember there being some sort of magician somewhere that did a similar motion, only they'd end up with some sort of sheet of cloth to wave around instead (which had probably been hidden up his sleeve).

Personally I was a little freaked out.

…Okay, I was _very_ freaked out. At the look in my eyes Symphony's smirk widened even more, into some sort of twisted grin. "I hope you don't mind becoming my little… experiment." Then she started to slowly lower her flaming-hand to my gut, watching the fear in my eyes increase with every inch that it drew closer.

If I didn't feel so sapped of energy, by this point I probably would've been struggling for my life. _Fuck_. _Why_ was I so sapped of energy? _Fuck my life, fuck my life, I'm gonna die._ All I could think was how unfair this was - what was the point of me getting pulled into this world only to die so soon into my travels? To my dismay I heard myself let out a wailing squeak from my clenched teeth, and despite myself I could feel my eyes watering. Clenching my eyes shut didn't help it - if anything I could feel the tears overflowing the dams that were my eyelids. I cursed to myself. _God damnit_, Elmo, don't die such a cowardly death, don't freaking cry in front of this girl because you're _scared_. Open your eyes! Stare her in the eye! Let her know what she's doing! Taking a human life - and if she takes pleasure in that, blimmin' haunt her for the rest of her days, do you hear me? _Steal her keys god damnit!_

No matter what I told myself, I was captured by my own fear, and my prisoner of a body was a traitor to my own feelings. At the same time as I felt tears start to flood my cheeks I felt Symphony's hand hit my gut like another winding blow. For a second I hoped that perhaps this wasn't a fatal blow, that all I was doing was exaggerating and that this wouldn't actually kill me.

But as my eyes shot open and I stared back at the girl who had brought me into this world, I felt my life draining from me the same way that my energy had left me moments ago. Fingers numbing, pins and needles shooting up my legs and arms, and then, nothing.

My sight and hearing were the last things to go, as I heard a faint "Little miss, I'd leave her alone if I were you…" and saw Symphony drop me with an angry and scared look on her face.

My body hit the cold floor like a sack of bricks, tumbling and clumsy. Everything was slow, clear. Blurry at the edges.

The last thing I remember seeing was Symphony's leather boots turning tail and running in slow motion, before I felt the warm arms of death embrace me.

.

..

…

….

…..

…You have no idea how disorientating it is to go through the feeling of death and then _wake up_.

_Alive_.

Sitting on one of the very chairs you'd been admiring in a certain junk shop less than half a day ago.

What the hell was all that? A _dream_? Either my dreams were getting more imaginative or-

_Fuck no_, the _hell_ was that a dream, what was I on, drugs? That was too realistic, too… I don't even know what it was! Why was I here?

Despite that there was now very little light coming in through the windows - or, rather, making its way into the room by winding its way around the many objects that were cluttered in front of the glass - the room was brighter than it had been earlier in the day due to a large Victorian lamp (one of those ones with a fat vase bottom and dangly bits off the shade piece). Somehow the cheery yellow light emanating from the lamp made the junk shop a lot more friendly, which was a large contrast to the paler white light that had been coming in from the cloudy sky before. For a second I was fooled by the lamp, as my 21st-century-civilisation-starved mind relaxed into thinking it was a light bulb and that the lamp was plugged into the wall somewhere, that it was using electricity.

The illusion was blown away at the same time that the door behind the desk the lamp was sitting on was opened, causing a small draft that made the flame in the small oil cage beneath the lamp's shade flicker. I frowned in disappointment automatically, and then shook my head at myself after realizing how easily I'd fallen into the lie that my own mind had whipped up for me, _again_. I always _had_ been terribly gullible, but to think that I could even fall for my own tricks twice in one day?

That was a bit, uh, worrying.

Remind me to never lie to myself.

"You a little lost, missus?"

"Eh?" My attention was brought back to the present as the owner of the Junk Shop entered the room.

"You seem to be lost in your own world there." It was a shock to see the man give me a widened smile and _not_ look creepy. In fact, in this light, he looked pretty friendly. With a playful expression like that, he really reminded me of Penny.

I smiled at him. "I'm alright. Thanks."

The man pulled up one of the less cluttered chairs from what looked like a leaning tower of books and folded cloth, carefully moving the few items that were on the cushioned surface to another space amongst the disorder. "What's with the thanks?" he asked as he sat down somewhat stiffly.

I furrowed my eyebrows slightly. "You… You _are_ the person who came into the alleyway, aren't you? Yeah, you must be, I recognised your voice… Did… didn't I?" My confusion grew as the man's face remained blank.

Then he cracked a smile. "Aye, that I am. Had you going there, didn't I?" He laughed. I gave him a dry look. His smile widened. "Glad you remember. Thought for a while there that I'd get a girl waking up in hysterics because she'd ended up in some creepy old guy's shop!" He laughed even harder, then.

I stared at him, trying to look unimpressed - this guy, he didn't even know how close he was to the truth! Earlier that day, if anyone had asked me I would've said that I was never going to come in here ever again. He was _still_ laughing! Was he an idiot? - but there was just something quite infectious about this guy's laugh. It was an odd one, with some kind of wheezy and high pitched "Hee Hee Hee!" theme to it, but all the same I couldn't help but smirk. I'm terrible enough at not laughing in funny situations, this guy was _not_ helping.

Eventually his crazy laugh calmed into a low chuckle. Then his face became more serious. "Gotta ask, what happened in that passageway?"

I frowned and furrowed my eyebrows, breaking eye-contact to look at my hands in my lap. It was a good question, a very good question indeed - but not one that I knew the answer to. I could've sworn that Symphony had been sucking the life out of me, but right now I didn't feel any different. It was incredibly odd how she had managed to drain my strength and then make me feel like I was losing my life's energy as well… incredibly odd. That would bother me for a while - Symphony hadn't been able to do anything like that to me before, so why had that happened now? Was it the gloves? Maybe there was something in the gloves that sapped energy, some kind of chemical… but no, that was stupid…

My eyebrows furrowed even more as I thought about it, practically morphing into a unobrow. Wait a second, I wasn't thinking in One Piece terms, I was thinking in back home terms. This mentality was stupid, argh, I really needed to get my act together. As soon as I realized this I felt stupid - it was so _obvious_.

A Devil's Fruit. Symphony had eaten a Devil's Fruit.

Although even _that_ told me nothing about what she'd done to me - I felt fine… didn't I? _Did_ I feel the same? _Was_ I fine?

…Someone define 'fine' for me, please. Bah. Fine is such a stupid word. Allusive.

I don't know what Symphony had done to me - or, rather, what she had been _trying_ to do. For all I knew, this man's interruption had been just in time to save my ass. I shook my head to myself, sighing. All this was just speculation. I didn't have a clue.

I turned back to the old man with a disappointed frown. "Sorry, I don't know what she did - I'm not even sure if she _did_ do anything, I mean, I don't _think_ I feel any different…" I sighed, and then gave the old guy a questioning look. "Did you see anything, Mr…?"

He rose his eyebrows - or, uh, what I could see of his eyebrows underneath that seagull-like tattoo on his forehead. "Bazyl, Mr Bazyl. All I saw was you on the ground, and that little miss with something purple in her hand. Then she ran off."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Purple?"

Mr Bazyl nodded. "Smokey-lookin'. Couldn't see what it was, exactly."

I looked to the side at nothing in particular, trying to remember something purple, but Symphony's dress had been green and her gloves had been grey. Even that flame thing that Symphony had conjured in her hand had been grey. Nothing had been _purple_. Unless… unless that flame thing had turned purple. But what would have caused it to change colour?

I dismissed the thought.

"So why were you in that passageway?"

Another question from the colourfully-skinned Mr Bazyl. Had I mentioned that tattoo on his arm, the one with the monster and the teeth? "I was going back to the big bakery down that way. I work there, and I've been lodging with the couple that own it."

The gingery-haired man seemed to take interest in this. "Is that so? Well, well…" he noticed my flickering gaze at his tattoo and smiled. "My wife is a jack of all trades," he let out a quiet laugh, "She trained as a tattoo-artist a long way back. Made her quite popular with the sailors. She's a wonderful artist, my wife, but not very imaginative, I'm afraid." His smile widened with pride. I couldn't help but smile too.

Suddenly the front door of the shop opened, and with a surprised murmur of "Speak of the devil!" from Mr Bazyl, the one and only Penny entered the building.

"Redge? Redge, love, are you- oh! My, my, Elmo, fancy seeing you here!" The woman paused at the door before closing it behind her and bustling over to us, her hair as frizzy as ever and her eyes sparkling the same way that they had the first time I'd met her.

Speaking of yours truly, I was gob smacked.

No, literally, my jaw was practically hitting the floor here.

_Penny was this guy's wife?_

…You actually learn something new everyday, I don't even-

My mind was _blown_.

"Elmo? Odd name." Penny had made her way to Mr Bazyl - Redge - to kiss him, but after his comment she wacked him on the head instead.

"Redge! Don't be rude! This girl here's a _good_ one, you hear me? She's gone through rough times! Be nice to her!" Her tone was stern while she told her husband off, but I could tell that she wasn't really angry with him. I smiled wistfully. There was something about this relationship that was just… really sweet.

One big _"Awwwwwww"_ for the happy old couple, guys.

When Penny turned back to me, I prepared myself for the typical small-talk of 'how are you's' and the like. Instead I got a falling expression and a worried "Lovey, what on _earth_ happened to you? You look so _pale - _Calista told me that you were doing well, was she lying? Oh, I could strangle that girl sometimes-"

"No, really, Penny, I'm alright!" I smiled at her awkwardly (I hate it when people overreact and go off on a tangent…). "I was just…" well, what? What should I tell her? 'I was attacked by a girl who brought me to this world and for some reason hates me'? Well, no, but what? Was it even worth telling her the true story? She didn't really need to know, and Penny being Penny would probably just blow the situation out of proportion…

Redge saved me from my own dilemma. "Penny, come here a sec."

Although the saving was a bit of an odd one. Mr Bazyl turned Penny's attention from me away as he turned them both so that their backs were facing me, but from the snippets I caught from their whispering told me that their quiet conversation was still directed at yours truly.

Their whispering went on for quite a while, and somehow I could only catch one or two sentences, such as "Do you think he'd mind?"

"Nah, he's a good boy, he won't mind. Owes us favours for life, anyway."

…I couldn't help but wonder how whoever this 'He' was had managed to get himself into such a deep and dark pit of trouble that he now owed the Bazyl's favours for life so that they'd get him out of it.

I also came to the conclusion that the Bazyl's lives definitely ran on putting people in their debt so that they could get freebies. Which is something that I should have realized earlier, to be honest, what with Penny's attitude and Redge being her husband.

By the time that Penny and Redge had finished talking, I was dozing off in my chair. Penny had to shake my shoulder gently to wake me up. I stood up groggily by demand and looked up at the woman from my seat sleepily. She smiled warmly.

"Come now, love, I'll take you back to the bakery."

I followed her out of the shop, tiredly saying yes to Mr Bazyl as he told me "Come back here tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock!".

It was only once we were halfway back to the bakery, with the chilly night air biting at my skin and slowly bringing me out of my dopey sleepiness, that I realized something. "Oh, crap, I've got work tomorrow! I can't go back to the Junk Shop at eight, I'll be in the bakery…"

"No, you'll be quitting tonight. You're free to go and meet Redge tomorrow, and I suggest you do." Of course Penny carried on walking as if she was making general conversation, but I stopped in my tracks. Woah, quitting? _What?_

I quickly ran to catch up with the old lady. "Hang on a sec, what do you mean I'm quitting? Since when?"

Still taking everything in her stride, as if we were talking about the goddamn weather, Penny replied, "You agreed that you wouldn't be working at the bakery for a long time, so it shouldn't bother you to leave today. What's the problem?"

Despite the fact that Penny wasn't pausing in her march, I noticed that her face looked rather grave. All the same, I was annoyed. Where was _my_ say in this? How could she expect me to allow her to just push me around, like a pawn in a game of chess? The first time, sure, she had helped me to get a job and a place to stay, but now all of a sudden she wanted me to leave it? Why? For what reason? "What's the _problem_?" I repeated indignantly, "The problem- just because I agreed to not work at the bakery for a long time doesn't mean I'm ready to leave it _now!_ Why should I quit? What, because you _tell me to_? I'm thankful to you, Penny, I really am, but I won't quit my perfectly good job and perfectly _great_ place to stay _just because you want me to!_"

"You want a good reason?" Penny stopped abruptly and turned to me, fury in her eyes. "You got _attacked_ today, _lovey_, and you want to stay here? Where you can be targeted again easily?"

That quietened me down considerably, but Penny wasn't done.

"Sorry for looking out for you, love! Sorry for _helping_ you weeks ago and wanting to help you _now_! I _care_ about you-"

"_Why_, though?" I couldn't help but shout at her at that point. It had been bothering me ever since I'd first thought about it. "_Why_ do you care about me?" I asked with a more level tone, staring at the ground, unable to look the woman in the eye. "More importantly, why so much? You, Calista, and now even Mr Bazyl… why are you all so intent on helping me?"

After a few moments, I heard a tutt from the woman in front of me. I looked up at her to see her giving me a sympathetic look.

"_Because_, miss Elmo Carol, you're a good person with a good attitude. Because we like you." she stepped forwards and brushed her thumb against my cheek fondly. "Because you're too young to be living miserably." She smiled then, and said, "Anyway, why should we have to explain ourselves to you, love? Everyone has their own reasons. Come on, it's late, we best get going, you've got a long day ahead of you tomorrow - and love, don't worry about the quitting side of things, I'll talk to Callie about it." With that she started walking again. I followed slowly, rubbing my cheek with one hand.

Oh, hell. My life was speeding by and dragging me along with it. I couldn't complain, though. Penny was right. What was I thinking, staying here any longer? It _had_ been long enough. I had money in my savings, and, heck, getting attacked by a possibly schizophrenic girl who hated my guts was as good a reason as any.

I sighed and jogged a bit to catch up with Penny.

My life, I have no control over it.

* * *

><p><strong>Bahhh. I'm sorry this is so late in the day. I made the mistake of leavin this until yesterday and today to finish. My bad.<strong>

**Also, I haven't proof-read it, I'm afraid, so if you could let me know if there are any mistakes I'd appreciate it.**

**Well, anyway. Deary me, Symphony, you have the worst temper. And some interesting gloves. Hm. Well, well. Hopefully you won't be so mean to Elmo the next time you see her, hmm? (Not likely.) For those who're interested, I've got a picture of Symphony here: http: / / .com / # / d46s4x3 (minus all the spaces) for you to... get a picture of her. It's a bit of a bad paint job, but, bluh, I couldn't be bothered with it after a while.**

**Anyway. I'm sorry, but I won't be able to update next week again because I've got my cousins coming over to stay from Thursday to next Monday, and so I'll be spending all my time entertaining them instead. Again, sorry. I'll try to not keep doing this, promise!  
><strong>


	6. Of Farewells and Resurrection

**Chapter 6: ****Of Farewells and Resurrection**

By the time we got back to the bakery I was like a zombie. I wanted to stick around, at least until the whole quitting and leaving fiasco was sorted out. Don't get me wrong - I didn't really _want_ to leave (although I knew that it was the best thing to do), and, granted, I didn't really want to be the one to break the news to the wonderful woman that was Calista, nor to the big burly guy who I was still a little scared of who was Bruce, the husband and man of the house- well, uh, factory, too.

So yeah, I _was_ thankful to Penny, who had said that she'd discuss the matters with them herself rather than letting me get tangled up in the nasty bits.

But I wasn't as thankful as I was guilty. It felt _wrong_, somehow. I was leaving her with my dirty work. And for that, I didn't want to just go off to bed. I'd regret it.

However, I couldn't stop myself from pulling out one of the chairs from under the dining table to sit down - I'd been on my feet for most of the day - and then, of course, no matter how hard I tried, I kept zoning out and having to shake myself awake again after accidentally letting my eyelids droop closed.  
>Damn my ability of being able to sleep even in loud noise and bright light.<p>

It only took a few minutes of me falling asleep in my hands and then waking up again on repeat for the two motherly characters in the room to notice and then usher me to bed. I couldn't really complain or refuse as I was now more of a zombie than I had been upon entering the building, and my body wanted sleep more than closure.

I barely had enough energy to slip out of my dusty day-clothes and into my roughly assembled and baggy night-clothes-slash-pyjamas, which I'd bought a few weeks prior for comfort reasons.

Clambering into my little bed and turning down the oil lamp on the cabinet by the bed, I removed my glasses and my watch clumsily and placed them on the side.

Even once I'd lain down and snuggled into my bed sheets I realized that I hadn't taken everything off for sleeping - my flat-cap was sitting sulkily half on my head and half on the pillow, disturbed from its original sitting place rather unceremoniously.

I grumbled as I reached for it, my arms heavy and lead-like. I managed to pick it up, but that was _all_I managed - my exhausted body would not provide me with enough strength to shift my arm and rest the hat on the surface beside my bed. Instead it ended up spending the night cuddled in my arms.

* * *

><p>I woke up the next morning with confusion lining my eyebrows.<p>

I was hugging- what- my _hat_, and there was a loud set of rapping knocks coming from the walls and _urgh_ so tired.

Letting out a loud groan of disgruntlement, I twisted around in my bed and shoved off the covers, going into my work-morning mode. The sequence; pull open drawer of bedside cabinet, pull out clean clothes, grab watch, glasses and hat, traipse to the bathroom, wash, and come outta there squeaky clean.  
>Just as I exited the bathroom there was another loud rap on the door. I furrowed my eyebrows questioningly. Eh? There's never a second knock. What was going on?<p>

I strode to the door and opened it just as the rapping stopped. Not entirely surprising, I found that it had been Calista rat-a-tat-tatting at my door with a basket full of clothes. She gave me a chastising look. "Come on, Carol-san, you're gonna be late if you don't hurry up." She continued down the corridor with her basket, leaving me just as confused as I had been before.

Late?

Late for work, maybe, but why did she knock a second time? If I was late for work, I was late for work. It wasn't really her obligation to make sure I was awake, only to give me a single alarm… There was something important I was missing…

Realization hit me like a brick in the form of a palm to the face. God damn it, so bloody typical, no wonder- freaking hell. Note to self: never recieve information when extremely tired... If I knew more about what the hell was happening today, I might've remembered - heck, I might've stayed up a little bit overnight thinking about it.

_But I still didn't have a freaking clue what was going on._

I followed Calista down the hall and into the kitchen, where I found her folding up some of the clothes from the basket and packing them into some sort of side-bag-satchel.

…Things were just getting weirder and weirder.

"Calista?" I questioned, planning on asking the woman whether she knew any of the plans for my day ahead.

Instead the woman gave me a fleeting glance and then continued with her packing, telling me "The food on the counter there's for you, eat up quickly, go on, go on!" as she became more frantic in her movements.

I obeyed, something in her voice telling me that I really shouldn't dawdle. On the counter top, there was a brioche-bread-bun with a knife and some butter as well as some jam beside it. Assuming that that was my breakfast, I sawed through it and began to butter it, adding the jam on afterwards.

Once I'd finished with my breakfast-sandwich I turned back to Calista, taking a sustaining bite while leaning against the counter. "Calista, do you know anything about what's happening today?"

I was ignored. Now the woman was packing what looked like little food packages into the satchel. There was a loud knocking from where I knew the front entrance to be, and with a yelp Calista quickly stuffed the last of the packages into the bag and picked it up, shoving it into my arms and pushing me towards the front door, telling me to "Eat up! For peat's sake, Elmo, take this situation a little more seriously!"

The door was somehow opened around me and I was pushed outside into the arms of Penny. Then suddenly I was tugged around and found myself in a tightly embraced hug, given by the female head of the bakery herself. I was thrown off guard for a moment, but then awkwardly hugged back while attempting to keep hold of my new satchel-bag and keep my breakfast off of her clothes.

"Take care of yourself, Elmo-san." I heard the woman sniff quietly before she released me and gave me an awkward smile. "Are you scared?"  
>I gave her a weird look. "Scared?"<p>

And then Penny was tugging me along. "Come on, lovey, we need to get going, the harbour's not too far away but if you walk slow we're not gonna get there for eight! Have a good day, Callie!" I barely had enough time to turn and give my ex landlady a quick wave and bright smile with a "Thank you for everything, Calista!" before it was impossible to do without tripping over at the speed that Penny was pulling me along.

I could almost swear that this woman was a freaking rocket, sheesh.

Penny eyed me frowningly. "You'll want to be eating that, lovey, if I were you."

Doing nothing but what I was told that morning, I munched away at my sandwich dutifully as we marched. The further we went the less I knew the way, and yet I recognised some of the buildings from that crazed run that had brought me into Algreen in the first place. It felt like it was years ago. So much had happened since then...

Feeling like I was forgetting something, I felt for my glasses on my face absent-mindedly, then moved on to check that I was, in fact, wearing my flat-cap.

"Penny! Elmo!" Mr Bazyl seemed to appear out of nowhere and jogged up to us with agility that really didn't seem possible for the age he looked. I noticed that instead of a button appearing through the button hole of his pocket there was a daisy in its place. It was oddly… cute. Very storybook. I liked it. It made me smile.

And then I broke out into a very large yawn, my late night and early morning finally catching up to me. Covering my mouth with my one previously-sandwich-holding-and-now-free hand and slinging my satchel over my shoulder with the arm that I had been dragged along by, I hardly noticed the old man's chuckling.

But I did notice it.

I scowled lightly at him.

His smile widened, "Late night? Really shoulda gone home sooner, miss Elmo, big day ahead of you, shoulda been more prepared~"

My face turned into a full-blown scowl. "Well _sooree_, mister husband of this lady," I pointed at Penny, who looked just as amused as Redge did, "But I do believe that it wasn't actually my fault." I gave them both accusing looks. "Not to _mention_ that I _still_ don't have a _bloody clue_ what the _hell_ is going on today!"

"Oh!" Penny suddenly snapped back into motion after her smirking pause, her eyes sparkling in excitement now instead of in determination to get here on time before. "Yes, Redge, come on, we've got family to see!"

And then the pair of them started walking off in the direction that Redge had come from, nattering happily, assuming that I'd follow them.

…Which I did, but not without extreme disgruntlement at the fact that I _still _didn't know what was going on, only that I was _possibly_ going on a ship and go sailing out to sea, and that there were more Bazyl's to meet.

Continuing in 'blissful' ignorance (which it would be, if I enjoyed not knowing things, which I don't), the older couple whispered and giggled amoungst themselves while I traipsed behind them, tempted to make grumbling noises just to make the point that I was out of the loop and also a third wheel.  
>However, my confusion only seemed to have amused the pair so far, and so I sighed in resignation and instead looked to the skies. The day was cloudy but clear in the distance and the air was cool, with a light wind that was less a breeze and more a tickle on my skin. Thankfully, the moving air was coming from my left (west?), which meant that for once it was blowing my side-parted fringe <em>away<em> from my face instead of _into_ it, which was never entirely pleasant. My flat-cap helped with keeping my hair away from my glasses - an added bonus - but by looking at the bright horizon where the dawning sun was half-covered by low clouds, I realised that the weather would probably get warmer later in the day.

Keeping an eye on Penny and Redge's walking feet, I swung my satchel around to my front and began carefully rummaging through it. Penny was certainly a resourceful woman, and Calista had seemed like a gal who could look after herself... from the contents of my bag, I could tell that she was also good at looking after other people.

She had provided me with two pairs of trousers, which to my surprise were made of denim. Jeans! I didn't know that jeans were a thing in the One Piece world... couldn't say that I wasn't ecstatic about it, though, back home all I'd ever _wear_ were jeans. Accompanied by the knee-length shorts that I was currently wearing, that made three... no, wait. I rummaged around a little more and found what I assumed to be some kind of darkly-coloured leggings. I furrowed my eyebrows and patted them back down into the bottom of the bag - I'm not really a leggings kinda girl. Other than the small packs of food that were tumbling about in the top of the bag, Calista had also slipped in my Sketchbook and some pencils (when did she get her hands on those?), as well as several button-up shirts, a brightly-coloured t-shirt, a thick jumper, and... hah! Yes! Elastic bands! I grinned and scooped one up to wear around my wrist in case I needed to tie my hair up. Elastic wouldn't usually be my first choice, it sticks to the hair and is a _right_ pain in the, well, scalp, to untie when you want to let your hair down, but it was something and that was great because having hair on a hot day is annoying as hell.

Satisfied with the contents of my bag, I returned my attention to the task at hand. Observing the buildings that we were walking around, I vaguely recognised them as the buildings that surrounded the usual market place, although the stalls that had lined the streets the first day that I'd arrived in Algreen were missing, which was somewhat disconcerting.

From there onwards it was once again uncharted territory for me; upon my arrival into Algreen, I had been like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. High on adrenaline, skirting in and out of alleyways, throwing myself around corners and generally being all over the place. Penny and Redge continued to natter on ahead of me, the maps in their heads obviously less holey than the fragmented directions in my mind.

It wasn't long, however, before the scene in front of me appeared familiar, although reversed. The last time that I'd seen this place, I'd been leaving it, not entering.

The docks.

With the grey-pink-yellow sky sitting above the dark but sparkling sea on the horizon, the wooden piers seemed welcoming, friendly; a stark contrast to the doom-and-gloom that had surrounded my mind the first time I'd seen the place. There were many sailing ships attached to metal posts scattered amoungst the stone and concrete of the harbour, some small and some larger (although nothing huge), though there were very few people milling about.

I looked to my entourage, assuming that we were here to meet one of the few people that ambled about on this fine morning, but to my surprise they continued walking and I was left with my only option of following them.

Curiosity killing the cat (luckily I'm not a feline), I jogged to catch up with Penny and fall into step with Redge, asking, "Hey, so, what, we're meeting a guy about a ship? Is that what's happening here?"

Penny gave me a secretive smile and then cackled at my scowl. "Be patient, love, I don't want to hafta explain it twice~"

My lips twisted into a frown, but I sighed in defeat and decided to be patient as ordered. We continued walking along the docks, my mind unable to help itself from wandering back to my arrival in this town. My eyes swept across the harbour and I was happy to find that I didn't recognise any of them. It would have been strange for a boat to stay somewhere for as long a time as I had, anyway.

We came to a stop at what looked like some kind of warehouse built on the dock. I stared up at it, my eyes following the wall to where the slanted roof sat _fairly_ high above our heads, wondering what the hell the place was. In front of us, there was a rusting pair of roughly-made metal doors, with the word "KNOCK" scratched onto it at Penny's head-height. I frowned and stared at it, not getting a particularly good vibe from the jaggedy-edged word.  
>Redge, however, seemed undeterred, and ratta-tat-tatted on the door, which released a hollow sound with every knock.<p>

After a few moments the door opened, catching on the stony floor and making a grating noise that went straight through me.

"Ah, Gramma, Grampa, what are you doing here?" the voice that came out of the man who opened the door didn't seem to fit his visual profile.

To my disbelief, the man in front of me appeared to be a younger version of Redge, though with redder hair, and less tattoos. No tattoos, in fact - he was a very large and intimidating-looking man, but his voice had been friendly and pleased to see his grandparents. His eyes were bigger than Redge's, too, I noticed, as the older man's were narrow and wrinkled, and the grandson's hair must have been only a little shorter than my own, though it was tied into a ponytail. He also wore a red-striped brown neckerchief, and there was an anchor embroidered onto the left side of his grey t-shirt.

I must have been gawping, because Penny began cackling at me again. "Don't look so shocked, lovey, it's a family trait for the blokes and the ladies to look awfully similar."

The man's eyes turned to me, and his expression became curious. Without asking me anything, he turned back to look at Penny and Redge, a smile forming on his lips, "Another passenger to repay my never-ending pit of favours, huh?"

Apparently I was now a passenger. Ohhhhhhhhhhh-_kay_ then.

So, this was the guy that had, somehow, ended up in so much debt with Penny and Redge that he now owed them for life, hm? I looked between him and the couple, wondering just _how_ something like that could happen.

Penny's smile-of-sunshine beamed brighter than the star on the horizon. "If you wouldn't mind, Baer, love." She waggled her eyebrows, and the young man let out a laugh.

"Like I have a choice!" His smile widened alongside the opening to the building as he pushed the door further open, holding an arm out to welcome them inside. "It won't cause any problems, so it's fine..." he closed the door behind me, and I glanced at him as he smiled some more and began walking further into the darkness of the room.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the sudden change of light - there appeared to be windows further up the walls of the building, but any light that streamed through them ended up being centered on the middle of the room where a large ship sat, being helped to stay upright by several rather hefty-looking lengths of rope and contraptions that were attached to the platforms that stuck out from the walls like a second floor.

...A rather familiar large ship.

I stared at the cargo ship that had brought me to the island blankly. It looked different. Fixed-up. And none of the people that were striding around (most of them looking pretty annoyed, I must admit) looked familiar to me.

So...

"I see you've got yourself a new ship, eh?" Redge grinned, admiring the reconstruction work that stood out due to the different colour wood.

"Yeah... It was just left tied up on the docks a few weeks back. Nobody claimed it, so the Mayor was gonna claim it, an' I thought, well, we could use a bigger ship, and although this poor lady was beaten up badly, Jian and Morty could fix her up..."

"You're looking awful confused, love."

I blinked, realising that Penny had been talking to me. I looked at her furrowing her eyebrows, and then turned back to the ship, which stood with a sort of beaten-but-proud look, something that I couldn't help but admire after how awful she'd looked upon tackling Reverse Mountain. "This is the ship I came here on..." I murmured quietly.

"Spooky."

I didn't recognise this new voice, and I switched my attention to finding the source. For a second, it seemed that the voice was disembodied, but then suddenly I noticed a figure beside Baer that hadn't been there before. I stared at the person in confuzzlement, at first mistaking the short and shapely man for a woman. He seemed very delicate, and his facial features looked like they could be that of a Geisha doll without any makeup and a strangely-shaped smoking pipe balanced between his lips.

He was only _just_ tall enough to be able to lean his elbow on Baer's shoulder as he tilted his head to the side, staring at me. "What's up, Cap?"

I humoured the newcomer and mirrored his action, smiling incredulously while 'Cap' gave us both weird looks. "Uh... I'm gonna do a favour for my folks... so we have a new crew member for a while..." Baer seemed to get more weirded out by the second, and I could hear Redge chuckling at us from behind me. I straightened my neck and raised an eyebrow at the pair, finding Baer's reaction and the other man's actions amusing.

"Is that so?" The shorter man wore a grey and blue-striped jumper with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and while he also wore a neckerchief around his neck, it seemed to be much more for looks rather than for the practicality that Baer wore his with. He moved from Baer's shoulder and walked towards me, smiling smoothly.

"And who might be this new crew member of ours?"

He held out his hand, and I grinned before shaking it. "Elmo."

* * *

><p>It turned out that, once a cargo ship, always a cargo ship.<p>

When Baer called a crew meeting, I thought that it was to introduce me - however, instead, it turned out to be a naming session. Baer announced that the ship needed a name, and that he needed suggestions. The majority of the crew groaned or sighed before wandering back off again, and in all honesty the people who _did_ stay didn't seem to be very creative. One guy suggested "The Patchwork Beauty", and I had to butt in with "That's not really majestic enough... She's a proud ship. If you're gonna go with that, you might as well go with something cheesy, like 'The Resurrection'."

Which of course meant that it was named "The Resurrection".

There were still things to be done, but once the more beefy characters of the crew had gotten all of the supply crates and barrels on board, things moved very quickly. There was a flurry of action as people were told to "Get to your stations!" and "Ready... _HEAVE!_", while wheels were turned and cogs started moving and the ship started shifting back towards the sea.

To my surprise, a part of the front wall of the warehouse could be totally removed, and there was a slope leading from that exit to the high tide of the sea.  
>I felt excitement coursing through my veins as those who belonged to the crew left their posts and began scrambling back onto the ship the closer to the water we got. I stood with Baer at the bow of the ship, where he was ready behind the helm to take things into his own hands once we were on the water.<p>

Halfway into the water, I spotted Redge and Penny waving from the dock. I grinned and waved, yelling as loudly as I could, "Thank you so much! I owe you!"

From land, the pair yelled back, "Yes you do!" and I laughed, watching them wave goodbye. I felt a pang of sadness, but pushed it away - adventure was out there, and maybe... maybe I'd be able to find a way to get back home, or even a way to join the Strawhat crew.

As I continued to wave with a pained smile, I saw Penny's face light up with realisation. "Oh! Baer! And you need to protect her for a while, too, she's got someone after her~!"

I deadpanned - I thought they'd _planned_ this? Turning to look at my new captain, I saw Baer's expression fall as he looked at me with suspicion.

"Protection? From _who?"_

I shrugged apologetically. "Possible schizophrenic chick who hates me for reasons that I've yet to discern."

"Schizo-_wha?_"

"Phrenic."

"...Oh."

He didn't sound convinced.

Well, what can I say?

Being problematic seemed like the reason I'd been put on this Earth.

* * *

><p><strong>Hey, yeah. Kinda haven't updated in almost a year.<br>**

**Writer's block hit and then college came along almost immediately after, so I've been... kinda busy. Kinda a lotta busy.  
><strong>

**This was pretty much a filler chapter. Hopefully the next one will be more amusing, although that, too, will also be a bit of a filler. You're gonna need to read the next one more than you need to read this one, though, because the next one is going to have a couple of clues hanging about that will become relevant in the chapter after that, and also later on.  
><strong>

**Things will really start to move the chapter after next, though. ...Gosh, I really need to learn how to stop rambling and actually _get somewhere_.  
><strong>

**So, I wanted to churn this out ASAP once I got back into it, and I haven't really checked it over for mistakes, so if you spot a spelling mistake or a typo here or there and let me know, I'll fix it.  
><strong>

**Thank you for reading!  
><strong>


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